The long-awaited tech IPO of the year — perhaps of the decade — is on. Facebook will file its paperwork for an Initial Public Offering on Wednesday, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
If it comes to pass, this will be the largest tech IPO in history, yielding around $10 billion for the social network. The next-largest tech IPO is Infineon, a German company that raised $5.9 billion in 2000. Google’s 2005 IPO, as big a deal as it was, didn’t even reach the $2 billion mark.
Details are scarce, Facebook isn’t commenting, and the WSJ’s source is unnamed. But the Journal has a track record on such stories that is hard to dispute. The $10 billion share offering would yield the company a total valuation of $100 billion, the paper says, which is right in line with where we expected it to be.
Facebook halted its trading in secondary markets for three days earlier this week — the strongest signal yet that an IPO is coming soon.
The WSJ also reports that Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley will manage the offering, and that Goldman Sachs will be “intimately involved.” That’s a blow for Goldman, which managed a billion-dollar private share offering for Facebook this time last year.
Check back in later — we’ll add more details as we get them.
SEE ALSO: Everything You Need to Know About Facebook’s $100 Billion IPO
SEE ALSO: How Does Facebook Compare to the World’s Biggest IPOs?
Source: http://mashable.com/2012/01/27/facebook-ipo/