Facebook’s early investors and employees may sell up to $5.5 billion alongside the company’s offering. Facebook said today that it is selling 180 million shares of stock at $28 to 35 a share. On top of that, other stockholders are selling 157,415,352 shares. Those proceeds will not go to Facebook.
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is selling 30.2 million shares, or up to $1.05 billion, which will mostly go toward settling the multi-billion dollar tax bill he’ll face when he exercises his options. Zuckerberg has an outstanding stock option to purchase 120,000,000 shares of our Class B common stock at a strike price of 6 cents. He’ll exercise half of it. That’s why he needs to sell 30.2 million shares to cover the taxes.
Even so, he’ll still have 57.3 percent voting control over the company, thanks to an extra 470 million shares over which he has “irrevocable proxy.” That means that while other people own those shares, they’ve given up the votes tied to them to Zuckerberg.
Zuck’s not the only one selling shares either. So are Accel’s Jim Breyer*, Peter Thiel, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. Then there are the institutional entities like Accel* and DST. In fact, it’s Breyer and his firm Accel that are walking away with the biggest immediate payday from the IPO.
Who’s not selling in this offering? Sean Parker, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.
The last important thing to note is that no one is selling a majority of their stake. Everyone who is selling is giving away somewhere between 1/10th and 1/4 of their stake.
We have the actual table from the S-1 here, and then we have a table calculating proceeds for every major shareholder right below that.
*Note: The amount sold by Breyer in the second line conflates shares that he personally owns and shares that his fund Accel Partners owns.
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...
Mark Zuckerberg is the founder and CEO of Facebook, which he started in his college dorm room in 2004 with roomates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Zuckerberg is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook’s service and development of its core technology and infrastructure. Mark studied computer science at Harvard University before moving the company to Palo Alto, California. Earlier in life, Zuckerberg developed a music recommendation system called...
We are a leading provider of technology solutions to the world’s top financial institutions, utilities, telcos and communications. We serve over 400 clients in some 45 countries, with five regional operational hubs and 12 offices. We service clients on every continent and provide them with 24/7 coverage. Clients from single-site installations to some of the largest global institutions trust DST Global Solutions to help them run their businesses more effectively.
Accel Partners is a global venture capital firm with offices located in Silicon Valley, New York, London, China, and India. They typically make multi-stage investments in internet technology companies. Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of excellence and innovation in the venture capital business and is dedicated to partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class companies. Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo...
Jim is passionate about social entrepreneurship and venture philanthropy, contemporary and modern art, photography, film, wine, and music. He actively supports numerous educational and environmental non-profit initiatives. Jim is a Partner at Accel and is the President of Accel Management Company. Jim has been an investor in over 30 consumer Internet, media, and technology companies that have completed public offerings or successful mergers. Several of these investments returned over 100 times their initial cost and many of these investments...
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