Facebook plans to file documents as early as Wednesday for a highly anticipated IPO that will value the world's largest social network at between $75 billion and $100 billion, the Wall Street Journal cited unidentified sources as saying on Friday.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are expected to lead what would be one of the largest initial public offerings in U.S. history, the Journal cited its sources as saying.
Facebook has been discussing raising $10 billion in a share sale that would value it at $100 billion, a person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg News in November. That would make it twice as valuable as it was in January 2011, when the company announced a $1.5 billion investment from Goldman Sachs and other backers.
Larry Yu, a spokesman for Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, declined to comment, as did representatives of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, both based in New York.
Co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 in a Harvard University dorm room, Facebook has amassed more than 800 million users with an easy-to-use website that lets anyone with an Internet connection construct profile pages, post video and photos and interact with friends.
The company has nudged aside competitors such as MySpace Inc. and generates sales from advertisers as varied as AT&T Inc., Best Buy Co. and Sony Corp.
The impending IPO is a prized trophy for investment banks, setting up a fierce competition on Wall Street, particularly between the presumed front-runners Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
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