Comment Re:Facebook IPO (Score 5, Interesting) 145
Facebook IPO wasnt a gaffe, it was a hedge fund scam. facebook was advised to give their IPO at a much higher value than they knew it could sustain, and the advisers hedged against facebook. made a lot of rich people richer, and fucked over some other rich people, and also fucked over some not so rich people.
Well, this is what gets me about the "Facebook IPO was a failure" argument. An IPO takes place for the benefit of the existing investors and stakeholders, whether or not that happens to be at the expense of anyone buying in.
Of course, normally one has to convince the would-be investors that it's also in *their* interest to do so, and obviously if you can be shown to have actually defrauded them, then that might not work out so well for you. But that doesn't change the basic principle- the people organising the IPO are doing so to benefit the existing stakeholders. From that somewhat amoral (but truthful) point of view, the Facebook IPO was a roaring success- for them.