Report: Facebook IPO filing could come next week

LOS ANGELES — Facebook could file regulatory papers as early as yesterday for its highly anticipated initial public offering of stock, according to a newspaper report. Facebook’s expected launch as a publicly traded company is the most hotly anticipated tech IPO in more than a decade. It would vault it into the top ranks of the largest public companies in the world, on par with the likes of McDonald’s Corp, Amazon.com Inc, Visa Inc and Bank of America Corp. The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, said Friday that the social-networking company could raise as much as US$10 billion in an offering that would value the company at US$75 billion to US$100 billion.

Either measure would dwarf the US$1.67 billion raised in Google’s 2004 IPO. That offering gave Google a market value of US$23 billion. Google is now worth US$184 billion. CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, 27, is already considered a billionaire because of shares traded on a closed market.

AP