The head of the social network Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is no longer included in the list of the forty richest people on the planet, according to the rating of the famous American economic magazine Forbes in August 2012. Overnight, the former Harvard student's fortune fell by $ 600 million due to a sharp drop in the stock of the company in the OTC market of the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (Nasdaq).
Founded in 2004 and becoming the largest in the world, the social network Facebook on May 18, 2012 launched the first public sale of shares (Initial Public Offering, IPO) with a placement price of $ 38. According to the American Associated Press, at the beginning of the IPO, the joint-stock company was able to attract more than 16 billion, while the entire company was valued at 104 billion.
On the second day of trading, Facebook shares began to fall and soon reached an all-time low of $ 19.69. Having recovered part of the fall, the securities of Mark Zuckerberg closed at $ 19.87 per share. Experts believe that the market situation could have been affected by the expiration of the moratorium on the sale of 271.1 million shares of the social network for the company's employees and early investors. As reported in RIA-Novosti, this has increased the volume of equity securities Facebook by 60%, which can take part in transactions.
The appearance of the social network Facebook on the May stock exchange was accompanied by various scandals. Due to technical problems, trading in the company's securities was delayed. Then, among the Nasdaq market participants, information was leaked that some banks, shortly before the IPO, learned about the decrease in the forecast for the annual profit of Facebook and informed only a select few clients. A group of investors sued the social network and the organizers of the IPO, accusing the defendants of causing damage to them.
28-year-old founder and head of the popular online platform Mark Zuckerberg is the largest shareholder in Facebook. The list of key shareholders also includes the venture capital fund Accel Partners, the Russian-British group DST and ex-employee of the social network Dustin Moskowitz. According to the Bloomberg analytical index, Zuckerberg's fortune is currently estimated at $ 10.2 billion - this is the lowest figure for him since the IPO.
Since the start of trading, the shareholdings of other Facebook founders have also dropped significantly. So, over the summer of 2012, Dustin Moskowitz lost about $ 2.4 billion; the value of the stake in Eduardo Saverin decreased by $ 960 million; Christopher Hughes lost about $ 400 million in the Nasdaq market. The author of "The Facebook Effect" David Kirkpatrick told Bloomberg that the market is not sure about the future of the social network. However, he believes that the head of the online network is not too worried about the reduction of his wealth.
