Wall Street

It's official. No one at NASDAQ has been reading The Game. Today NASDAQ, which already boasts a Look at me! I'm one of you! Tumblr, made its designs on the local startup scene obvious by partnering with the mothership: New York Tech Meetup. The press release says that the partnership will be "focused on engaging, educating and promoting New York City's technology community in unique and relevant ways," but leaves out the implied plea to future Mark Zuckerbergs of the East: Don't forget us when its time to IPO! Read More

The Manhattan District attorney recently faxed Twitter a subpoena asking the social media company to appear in court and to bring "any and all user information" related to the Twitter account of Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris. (No, it wasn't because Mr. Harris started the rumor that Radiohead was playing in Zuccotti Park: the subpoena is related to Mr. Harris's alleged disorderly conduct during the famous Saturday march that got more than 700 protesters arrested for walking in the street over the Brooklyn Bridge.) Yesterday, Mr. Harris's lawyer asked the court to toss the subpoena, calling overbroad, improper and abusive, according to the New York Times. But would Twitter have heeded the call?

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In SecondMarket's 2011 year-end report, Facebook beat out Twitter, Foursquare, Gilt Groupe, Hulu, Spotify, and more as the trading platform's number one most-watched company. Facebook has 14,973 "watchers," almost double the next-closest, Twitter at 7,854. More tellingly, according to public statements from CEO Barry Silbert, 30 percent of SecondMarket's revenue came from trading private shares of Facebook stock, which will soon become a province of the public markets.

But to hear Mr. Silbert tell it, he's coping with the loss just fine. After all, it's not like they didn't know this was coming. As Crain's reports, on Wednesday, Mr. Silbert told the audience at an Xconomy forum on New York's venture capital scene, "We're completely prepared to fill the hole,” adding, “We're hiring, and we have a lot of capital.”

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Facebook's S-1 filing is out, and almost all the early reports were true. The company has reserved the ticker symbol FB, although it has not announced on which exchange it will debut; the working number is $5 billion and the lead underwriter is Morgan Stanley.

Reporters were also able to sniff out four other banks working on the IPO: J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Barclay's Capital. But one underwriter slipped through: the boutique New York-based investment bank Allen & Company, which puts on the annual Sun Valley conference that regularly attracts billionaires and media moguls.  Read More

IT'S FINALLY HEEEEEEEEEEEEEREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! Here's what we learned:

Mark Zuckerberg has 28.2 percent voting power, pre-IPO based on personal shares: 28.4 percent of class B shares. But that's not all. "As a result of voting agreements with certain stockholders, together with the shares he holds, Mark Zuckerberg, our founder, Chairman, and CEO, will be able to exercise voting rights with respect to an aggregate of shares of common stock, representing a majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock following our initial public offering." Read More

Facebook is expected to IPO today, according to news reports, and details are starting to leak out. If you believe the papers, here's what we know as of this morning:

IFR:

"Facebook is expected to file to raise US$5bn in a preliminary IPO prospectus on Wednesday morning, which while less than anticipated could be increased to satisfy ultimate investor demand"

"the company has been unusually guarded about the process for selecting banks involved in the underwriting syndicate" Read More

The NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange would both love for Facebook to IPO its stock there. Last week, it was reported that Facebook had reserved the symbol FB for use "on either exchange," which gave some business news readers pause. Wait a second, a two-letter symbol? Doesn't that mean anything anymore?

It used to be that traders could tell at a glance whether a company was listed on the NASDAQ or NYSE: the former used a four character symbol convention and the latter allowed for one to three character symbols. But the vanity tickers became a bargaining chip in the battle for IPOs between the exchanges, which has grown increasingly heated. Most companies want a symbol that fits with their brand, like LNKD, AMZN, GRPN, AAPL, or NYT. Read More