Facebook IPO values company up to $95B Facebook IPO values company up to $95B ADVERTISING NEW YORK — Facebook, the company that turned the social Web into a cultural and business phenomenon, is worth as much as $95 billion, according
Facebook IPO values company up to $95B
NEW YORK — Facebook, the company that turned the social Web into a cultural and business phenomenon, is worth as much as $95 billion, according to the price range for its upcoming initial public offering of stock.
Facebook’s IPO, expected in a couple of weeks, would be the biggest ever for an Internet company. Facebook disclosed the price range of $28 to $35 per share in a regulatory filing Thursday.
At the high end, Facebook and its current shareholders could raise as much as $13.58 billion — far more than the $1.9 billion raised in the 2004 offering for current Internet IPO record-holder Google Inc. The IPO valued the company at $23 billion. Google is now worth about $200 billion.
Facebook Inc.’s IPO has been highly anticipated, not just because of how much money it will raise but because Facebook itself is so popular. The world’s largest online social network has more than 900 million users.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who turns 28 this month, has emerged as a wunderkind leader who’s guided Facebook through unprecedented growth from its scrappy start as an online hangout for Harvard students.
GSA offered energy contractors tax breaks with unusual twist
WASHINGTON — It was a curious offer to contractors from a government agency: We’ll give you a tax deduction for making federal buildings more energy efficient if you qualify and if you’ll write us a check for 19 percent of the tax break’s value.
The General Services Administration, already under a cloud for a lavish Las Vegas employee conference, says that after seven months, it dropped its demand for the giveback requirement because there were no takers.
But the policy is now raising new questions about whether GSA was trying to raise money for its own budget without congressional authorization, whether that effort was legal and whether other agencies have tried anything similar.
“It was brought to our attention that certain people at agencies were asking for what looked like kickbacks in order to get allocations of a tax deduction,” Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s oversight panel, said Thursday. “This is a major concern and I’m certainly going to investigate this.”
GSA officials said the practice was legal and a way for them to raise money to make additional federal buildings more energy efficient. GSA manages 9,600 federally owned or leased buildings, more than any other landlord, though some federal properties are owned by the Defense Department or other agencies.
Model, tycoon duel over child support in NYC
NEW YORK — She has one of the world’s most famous faces. He’s a billionaire fashion CEO. And their 5-year-old son is at the center of a bitter, big-money child support fight.
Supermodel Linda Evangelista and ex-boyfriend Francois-Henri Pinault, a French business tycoon now married to actress Salma Hayek, faced off Thursday in the utilitarian environs of a Manhattan family court.
She wants a court to make him pitch in for child-rearing expenses she has tallied at nearly $50,000 a month — for armed bodyguards and a round-the-clock nanny, among other costs.
The trial is offering a public glimpse into the lives of the boldface and beautiful, from the vagaries of a modeling career to the peripatetic lifestyle of a movie star’s child. The first day of testimony included a detailed description of a $12 million mansion and Pinault discussing his brief breakup with Hayek before their 2009 marriage.
Evangelista, the 1980s and 1990s magazine-cover fixture who famously quipped that supermodels “don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day,” looked on with somewhat anguished poise in a demure black knee-length skirt, flower-patterned blouse and tan stiletto pumps.
By wire sources
