Social Networth as Facebook gets
set to float
Firm could be worth up to
£64billion
31 January 2012
FACEBOOK founder Mark Zuckerberg
is poised for a £16billion payday as his iconic social network is floated on
Wall Street.
The 27-year-old's website is
expected to file papers as early as tomorrow with a view to being listed on the
US stock market this spring.
It is likely to be valued at
between £48billion to £64billion. That would hand Facebook's baby-faced founder
a "paper fortune" of £16billion through the shares he holds.
Zuckerberg created Facebook in
2004 in his dorm at Harvard University. The website was for students but then
took off worldwide. It now has more than 800 million users.
The typical member has 130
"friends". A staggering 250 million photos are uploaded every day.
Facebook is thought to have made
£640million last year. A float was seen as inevitable once Facebook's number of
private shareholders crossed the 500 mark.
James Montgomery, head of US
investment bank Montgomery & Co, said: "The float will be
iconic."
At £64billion, Facebook would be
worth roughly the same as McDonald's and five times more than Yahoo!
The Facebook story was
immortalised in movie The Social Network, starring Jesse Eisenberg as
Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake as pal Sean Parker.
No comments:
Post a Comment