The year 2011 restarts on the same pace as 2010 for Facebook

The year 2011 restarts on the same pace as 2010 for Facebook. According to several sources cited yesterday by the "New York Times", the social network would have looped a $ 500 million fundraising: 450 million from Goldman Sachs and 50 million from the Russian Fund Digital Sky Technologies (DST), already shareholder to about 10 of Facebook. This fundraising leverage $ 50 billion Mark Zuckerberg society! Is more than Yahoo!, eBay, or Time Warner... Turnover of Facebook, which exploded last year, is estimated at between 1.5 and $ 2 billion. He is still considerably lower than that of other Internet companies. A clause of the agreement would also allow Goldman Sachs to sell part of its shares to DST for a maximum of $ 75 million.

This round table is the most important in the history of the company and door to more than 1.3 billion the total raised funds. In June, Facebook had received 120 million dollars, mainly at Elevation Partners. Previous inputs had been led by DST (200 million dollars) in May 2009 and Microsoft ($240 million) in October 2007. The funds should allow Facebook to continue its policy of hiring, while the company exceeded 2,000 employees around the world. The social network should in particular continue to open offices abroad and to strengthen its attractiveness, increasingly high former employees of Google, AOL and other Yahoo!. Facebook could also take the opportunity to accelerate its external growth, while the "Financial Times" revealed yesterday that Twitter had refused in 2008 a Facebook for about $ 500 million buyout offer.

The SEC is the second market

The agreement would allow especially Facebook to continue to attract investors, Goldman Sachs has created a tool for some of its largest clients to invest indirectly in Facebook by this bias. A system that could allow Facebook not to exceed the bar of 500 investors to its capital, which the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) requires, even private corporations, to publish their financial results. The SEC would look now on the practices of several companies Internet, including Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, LinkedIn, which use the second market to resell some of their actions - in particular their former employees. Facebook is the most active company on these marketplaces: during a sale organized in November by one of them, SecondMarket, approximately 40 million of Facebook shares have been exchanged. It is on this market, for example, DST increased its participation in the social network in recent months by regularly purchasing shares from former employees.

Pressure on an IPO

The new fundraising, according to some observers, could accelerate the introduction in Facebook stock, even if its leaders say always want to take their time and fixing rather deadline to 2012. Goldman Sachs would then be in pole position to lead the operation.

The growing development of Facebook would also have a direct impact on the personal fortune of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. It could double and spend of $ 6.9 billion, according to recent estimates of "forbes", more than 13 billion dollars, propelling the young man of twenty-six years a few cables of the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin ($ 15 billion each).