Why Facebook should 'unfriend' Wall Street

The social network is so wildly popular, argues Francesco Guerrara in The Wall Street Journal, that it doesn't need Wall Street to sell its IPO

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has the rare opportunity to do what most previous IPOs haven't, says Francesco Guerrara in The Wall Street Journal, by cutting out Wall Street altogether.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Investment bankers are furiously jockeying for a piece of Facebook's $10 billion initial public offering next spring, says Francesco Guerrera in The Wall Street Journal. But Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg should ignore all those "'Like' comments" and "unfriend Wall Street." Thanks to "its size, business model, and popularity, Facebook is the rare company that doesn't need Wall Street to go public." And for its own sake, and the sake of fairness, Facebook should put self-dealing bankers "out of their misery with a firm 'thanks, but no thanks.'" Here, an excerpt:

Zuckerberg's has two options: A traditional IPO, in which banks distribute shares to investors in exchange for a percentage of total proceeds; and the little-used "Dutch auction" that cuts out the Wall Street middlemen by making the allocation of shares dependent on prices bid by each investor.

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