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Insights and Opinions: A Contrarians Viewpoint on the Facebook IPO

For today's Insights and Opinions section, we're sharing the opinions and views of Megan Lisa Jones, an investment banker, attorney, and author. Megan shares her view on what the Facebook IPO means--and doesn't mean.


I've been reading the recent press on the Facebook IPO with an increasingly unsatisfied feeling of unease. Yes, NASDAQ botched initial trading, Morgan Stanley got aggressive on pricing and deal size and the company management was perhaps arrogant. But none of these issues, or the other commonly discussed ones, addresses the real issue: that of how hard it is for even successful companies to go public after Sarbanes Oxley passed in 2002.

Facebook has been accused of "closing the IPO" market; it's also facing a number of lawsuits tied to the IPO (as if the company owed flippers a pop on their short term investment). While a company can open or close the IPO market, a temperamental animal at best, I don't think Facebook deserves the blame for this one. (Continued...)


Read the rest of Megan's piece, A Contrarians Viewpoint on the Facebook IPO.