Facebook reportedly looking at filing for IPO next week

Citing “people familiar with the matter,” The Wall Street Journal reports Facebook Inc. could file papers for an initial public offering as early as next week and is close to picking Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter for its IPO. Facebook could file papers for the IPO as early as Wednesday, but that timing is still being discussed, the source says, adding the company is currently looking at a valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion—and estimate the stock offering could net as much as $10 billion. Facebook’s IPO has been hotly anticipated as a defining moment for the latest Web investing boom. The Menlo Park, Calif. social-networking company, which has more than 800 million members, has changed the way people interact with each other and share information on the Internet. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment, as did a Morgan Stanley spokesman. The largest global technology IPO on record was a $5.9 billion offer in 2000 by Infineon Technologies AG, the former semiconductor unit of Siemens AG. The largest global Internet IPO was a $2.8 billion sale by World Online International NV, a European Internet service provider, also in 2000. The largest U.S. Internet IPO, the $1.9 billion sale in 2004 by Google Inc., which valued Google at $23 billion, ranks No. 3 among global Internet IPOs. Read the full story here.