Facebook debuts on the market above $42 per share‏ to reach $100bn valuation

Facebook opened trading this morning with an 11% gain over the expected selling price with just over $42.05 per share. The original selling price of shares is said to have been $38 per share.

Trading had been expected to start around 11am this morning but was delayed by a few minutes, which in return meant the share price lost some of its gains. From an initial high of $40 the shares soon reversed to their near enough trade prices after two hours from Mark Zuckerberg ringing the opening bell in California for the New York based stock exchange on Wall Street.

Zuckerberg is selling 30.2 million shares in the IPO offering. The value of the company has an estimated worth of over $104billion, placing the social networking founders into the top tier of the super-rich. Mark Zuckerberg has said that a portion of his profits will cover the massive tax bill he will be hit with.

Co-founder Eduardo Saverin congratulated Zuckerberg via his Facebook page: “Congrats to everyone involved in the project from day one till today, and I especially wanted to congratulate Mark Zukerberg (sic) on keeping tremendous stead-fast (sic) focus, however hard that was, on making the world a more open and connected place.”

Saverin is believed to be now worth over $2.7billion. The social networking site is soon to reach over a one billion users. Facebook is said by many to be the defining company of the 21^st century.

Matthew Warcup