Facebook: The smart money exits
The Facebook IPO is now set to raise an absolutely astonishing amount of money — as much as $18 billion, if the greenshoe is exercised and the offering prices at the top of the indicated range. As a result, it’s certain to be the single largest technology IPO of all time. (Most companies don’t even have a valuation of $18 billion when they IPO, let alone have $18 billion worth of stock for sale to the public.) So what is Facebook going to do with all that money? Well, it turns out that in upsizing the size of the IPO, Facebook has not actually increased the number of shares it’s selling to the public.