So, Facebook shares are still at about $32, which isn't quite as bad as a couple of weeks ago but still 15% below the IPO price of $38. Today the Wall Street Journal delves into the whole story of the IPO, how it got priced, who was in charge of navigating the deal, and how it all went so wrong. A guy at Morgan Stanley who's become sort of a go-to for tech IPOs, Michael Grimes, gets the brunt of the blame, having sold Facebook on the idea that he should be the "single driver" of the deal.
He also said that if things went sour, it would be his "throat to choke," and that's basically what the Journal does with this story. Shares were priced too high, they say, and big investors got spooked when Facebook announced just days before the IPO that they would be increasing the number of shares by 25%, or 84 million shares. That caused some concern from the banks underwriting the deal that it wouldn't trade well, and, of course, that's what happened in addition to first-day technical glitches with the NSDAQ.
Anyway, if you bought shares in early June when the stock hit lows of around $26, you're probably pretty happy right now, and doing just fine. As Forbes points out today, the stock is steadily climbing back up.
Sidebar: The NYT just noticed that Facebook has a way of making one feel bad if, say, one is estranged from certain members of one's family who nonetheless keep showing up all happy in one's news feed. Also, it makes navigating the world of exes a whole new can o' worms, but we digress.
