Business     

Facebook investors see 25% loss

Agencies via Shanghai Daily, May 22, 2012

• Facebook shares sank Monday in the first day of trading without the full support of the company's underwriters, leaving some investors down nearly 25 percent from where they were on Friday afternoon.

  Facebook's debut was beset by problems, so much so that Nasdaq said yesterday it was changing its IPO procedures. That may comfort companies considering a listing but does little for Facebook, whose lead underwriter Morgan Stanley had to step in and defend the US$38 offering price on the open market.

  Without that same level of defense, its shares fell US$4.64 to US$33.67 in the first minutes of trading yesterday. That marked a fall of more than 12 percent from Friday's close and about 25 percent from the intra-day high of US$45 a share.

  Volume was again massive with more than 52 million shares trading hands in 15 minutes. Nearly 581 million shares were traded on Friday in the five or so hours that the stock was open.

  As the stock fell, there was a long list of questions - ranging from whether the underwriters priced the shares too high to how well prepared the Nasdaq was to handle the biggest Internet IPO ever - and few immediate answers.

  "It was just a poorly done deal and it just so happens to be the biggest deal ever for Nasdaq and they pooched it," said Joe Saluzzi, co-manager of trading at Themis Trading in New Jersey.

  Nasdaq said yesterday morning that the changes it was making would prevent a repeat of what happened on Friday, when glitches prevented some traders from knowing for hours whether their trades had been completed.

  It also said it would implement procedures to accommodate orders that were not properly executed last week.

  A source said Morgan Stanley's brokerage arm still had a "large number" of share orders from Friday that were not confirmed, which it was working to resolve.

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