LinkedIn May Head for an IPO Sooner than You Think
LA Times reports that professional networking site LinkedIn may file for an IPO with the SEC as early as today or this week. LinkedIn hired Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase to lead the public offering, while the network implied a $2.5 billion value on private trading exchange SharesPost.
“LinkedIn Chief Executive Jeff Weiner ducked the question whether his company was planning to go public in a November interview. Weiner, a former Yahoo Inc. executive, joined LinkedIn in December 2008 and became CEO in June 2009.”
LinkedIn’s $2.5 billion may dwarf compared to Facebook’s $50 billion, but it may just be the first major Silicon Valley social network to go public. The news of an IPO first emerged when sources initially implied the professional networking site will file an S-1 registration statement in Q1, 2011. Nonetheless, and despite of all the hype, LinkedIn is not the only one on the web going public.
Skype, which recently launched the latest version of Skype for Mac, also postponed its plans for an IPO until the second half of 2011, reportedly due to an uncertain market and a recent appointment of a new CEO, Tony Bates. Online publisher Demand Media also launched its IPO this week, with 4,500,000 shares estimated between $14.00 and $16.00 each. This attracted some scrutiny from the SEC, similarly to Facebook, which in turn may hold back on its public offering due to that very factor.
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
