[tybris]

Not wrong. Facebook and the investors that sold stock in the IPO got $38*the number of shares. Whatever happens after the IPO is essentially irrelevant to them, except their remaining shares have gone down in market price. That probably doesn't hurt much if you realize that a day earlier there was no market price, and you got a great deal on the shares you did sell. Morgan Stanley is probably also not being harmed in this transaction (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenshoe ). They do have reason to support the IPO price level. Otherwise, it will be much harder for them to find investors for the next Internet IPO, which means lower prices, which means lower underwriter fees.

The people on the wrong end of the deal are those that bought Facebook shares pre-IPO or in the hours after the IPO. The people on the right end are all early Facebook investors selling shares and the underwriters.

[nlz1]

You are basically admitting that Zuck didn't build a valuable company, but instead he conned investors (and Main Street) out of billions (coming days and weeks will tell exactly how much). So, congratulations to him I guess.

[mikeryan]

There's no con here. Anyone who bought at the open price had all the information they needed to make an educated purchase of the Facebook stock. I'm not an institutional investor and I looked at the P/E of 100 and thought it would be kind of silly to buy at that price and many others here seemed to think the same thing.

Zuck has built a valuable company - its just not $100B valuable. But a $25B company isn't peanuts.

[nlz1]

Agreed, but it turns the stomach a bit to read the FB fanboys slapping each other on the back about FB being a "$100B company" (and that the IPO "proves" it).

FB scored a win by getting $100B, but in my opinion it's tainted, and they may have poisoned the well for those who follow.

[rdl]

Higher stock price makes it easier to use stock to buy other companies.