nikkei lost 265 points. in hong kong the hang seng skidded 249. the big question on investors minds this morning, will it live up to the hype? facebook begins trading on the nasdaq around 11:00 a.m. this morning under the ticker symbol fb. after becoming the world s largest internet ipo there is no doubt facebook stock will pop, but the question is how much? and for how long? will it be able to buck the recent downward trend? broader markets will be under pressure after asian stocks plunged to the lowest level in six months this morning. a downgrade to greece s credit rating and an escalating banking crisis in spain are adding to concerns of a eurozone breakup. in addition to europe s debt worries, weak earnings from caterpillar and gamestop were the biggest drags on the dow and s&p. meanwhile the tech-heavy nasdaq was weighed down by losses in apple and qualcomm.
sorry, 2,000 of them, 2,000 of the overall 3500 of them joined in the center of hackers center. i m here at 1 hacker way in front of of the company s menlo park headquarters to ring in the opening bell with mark zuckerberg and cheryl sandberg, the company s new coo, breaking records heft and right. the stock price up about 5% right now, but just within the first four minutes of trading, over 100 million shares of facebook, ticker symbol fb, shares were traded, this company has broken lots of records. now, if you can believe it, even bigger than ford and general motors in terms of size, even bigger than hewlett-packard, dell and mcdonald s, and it s now the number two largest ipo in u.s. history. eclipsing general motors, falling behind visa. the stock is going to go up, the stock is going to go down, jenna, but one stat to keep in mind, for every two bucks that
facebook for $100 billion. ceo and founder mark zuckerberg expected to make something like $20.3 billion, co-founder eduardo saverin $$2.6 billion. here is a clip from the social network. you signed the papers. you set me up? you re going to blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own party? this will be like i m not a part of facebook. it won t be like. you re not part of facebook. a lot of controversy surrounding eduardo saverin, renounced his u.s. citizenship, moved to singapore, a country with no taxes on capital gains. this move estimated to reduce his tax bill by a cool $67 million and that has two senators so, so peeved, so upset they want legislation to make people like severin pay. sarerin turned his back on the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated and helped him become a billionaire. this is a great american success story gone horribly wrong. eduardo saverin wants to defri
facebook at $100 billion. the most valuable company ever at the time of its initial public offering. and more valuable than citi or mcdonald s. millions hoping it will help them boost their bottom lines this morning. dan simon is live at the facebook mothership in menlo park, california, where workers are marking the occasion by working all night long. seriously, dan, what s up with that? it s 2:00 in the morning here and we re wide awake. they re having a hack a thon, an opportunity for facebook employees to basically do what they do best build, design, create. they do this periodically, an interesting public relations move as we re about to begin the trading of the stock. what they want to do is send a message to the world that they built this company on building stuff. so that s what they re doing. they posted pictures to the website showing what s going on inside some of these rooms. in terms of the fundamental challenge facing facebook in the future, it s exactly tha
be worth more than mcdonald s by happy hour tomorrow night. we ll keep you here as well, ali. let s bring in christine romans. of course. it s very interesting. let s get to it. institutional investors, windows has closed for them to say they want to get in. those are the big guys. the little guys are waiting to find out what the ipo price will be and put in your limit orders. that s what i keep advocating. what price do you think you want to pay for facebook stock when it starts trading under the ticker symbol fb? one reason there s so much hype around this initial offering is this is a company that everyone knows, right? 900 million people around the world who are on facebook. take a look at this. this is a graphic that shows the connections between users worldwide through facebook. it s a company that has changed how we talk to each other and brought us together with new people in new ways all over the world. i want to show you something else. 20 minutes on facebook,