As the media has made us very aware, Facebook went public on Friday last week. The price on it was set at $38 a share and it made a big splash on NASDAQ for several hours. It ended up dropping as the day went on and finished at alittle over its initial price of $38. Now that is the boring part, the interesting part is just how much all the principals at Facebook made as a result of the social networking site going public. Let's start with the creator of Facebook and its most prominent face: Mark Zuckerberg.
Mr. Zuckerberg owns 503.6 million shares of Facebook, which comes to around $19.1 Billion dollars in total worth. Yes, I did just write $19.1 Billion. One other number to consider: 28. That is Zuckerberg's age. He is 28 and a multi-billionaire! Hard to imagine. But he did it the right way and has done things his way all the way to this point. I can't argue that he hasn't earned his massive success. But $19.1 Billion just seems insane to even imagine anyone earning, but someone so young makes it even more so.
Zuckerberg ended up selling 30.2 million shares for a return of $1.15 Billion dollars. This will be used to pay the taxes on Zuckerberg exercising 60 million shares.
The next on the list is Dustin Moskowitz, 27, who was a co-founder of Facebook. He owns 133.7 million shares valued at $5.1 Billion.
Eduardo Savern, 30, was another co-founder and has shares worth $2.7 Billion dollars. Savern owns 4% of the company's overall shares. He currently lives in Singapore as a celebrity of sorts and has just recently renounced his US Citizenship, which will save him $67 million in capitol gains taxes on his new found wealth.
There are three others who are now billionaires and they are all 30 or younger. Each has values of stock of over a Billion dollars each.
To me this whole thing shows how insane our system of Capitalism really is. These young men created a product, Facebook, that became massively popular. Then they decided to offer an IPO and allow investors to get in on their success. They set a rather arbitrary price per share and in a day all become billionaires.
It just seems all so ethereal. The money is being moved around electronically, the shares are not on paper, and the wealth these young men have made can be gone in an instant.
I just wonder once you have achieved massive wealth and your goal of making money is no longer, then what becomes important? Do you change your objective to being the very best at what you do? Do you make giving back to those less fortunate, just like Bill Gates and Bill Clinton have done with the foundations, your primary objective? Or do you simply want to protect your wealth and accumulate more?
I can't imagine once you have billions that you would want more. But I have learned to never underestimate the greed of people...sigh.
In any event, these young men now have more wealth than a very large percentage of the world's population. My hope is that they take this new wealth and use it for the greater good. I am an idealist, I know. But I think some, like Zuckerberg, will give back. Poor Idealist til the bitter end. A Billion dollars and under 30, wow.
No comments:
Post a Comment