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As Facebook Share Price Free-Falls, SEC Plans to Investigate ‘Issues’ in Company’s IPO

May 22, 2012  •  Post A Comment

Facebook’s much-hyped initial public offering hasn’t exactly gone according to plan — at least not for small investors. The stock price fell further today, and that’s the least of the company’s problems, Deadline.com reports.

The story reports: “SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said that her agency plans to investigate ‘issues’ involving the IPO. While she wasn’t specific, her comment came as Reuters reported that the consumer Internet analyst for Morgan Stanley, Facebook’s lead underwriter, recently slashed his revenue forecasts for Q2 and all of 2012 — and that news was passed along to institutional investors during the company’s road show but not to the public. If true, then it could have violated laws that bar companies from selectively disclosing important information to certain shareholders. It also could explain why institutional buyers chose not to buy Facebook shares as the price fell on Monday and today.”

The share price dropped 8.9% today to land at $31.01 — $6.99 below the price of Friday’s offering.

Vanguard CEO Jack Bogle, appearing on CNBC, said: “This is a classic example of investor greed, including institutional greed and underwriter greed and company greed. So the message is, when all the parties to a transaction are greedy, this is the kind of outcome you can expect.”

And there’s more: “Yesterday, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said it will review what happened on Friday, when investors trading about 30M Facebook shares weren’t given confirmations for their transactions, a major snafu,” the Deadline story reports.

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