Zuck’s docs get fast-tracked by the FTC in pre-IPO rush

The Federal Trade Commission has just given the green light to an expedited filing for some of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pre-IPO paperwork.

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As most analysts are predicting Facebook will price its shares sometime between May and August, the window for mandatory paperwork is quickly closing. Today’s rush job involves waiving a 30-day waiting period for a notice on Zuckerberg’s exercising around $5 billion worth of stock options in the initial public offering, according to anonymous sources for the New York Times.

Those sources also estimate a tax bill for Zuckerberg amounting to around $2 billion. Say what you will about life in the middle class, but at least we don’t get $2 billion tax bills.

Not many CEOs would have to file such documents pre-IPO; however, Zuckerberg controls a larger-than-usual amount of Facebook stock — and he will likely continue to maintain control of the board via voting rights due to some clever contractual manipulations, as well.

Today at noon, the company is said to be permanently halting all private trading of Facebook shares on secondary markets such as SharesPost and SecondMarket.

Also, sources familiar with the matter say Facebook is preparing to start its big roadshow next week and could be aiming for an initial public offering as early as late April. “Our sources are very reliable,” private-company financial firm PrivCo CEO Sam Hamadeh told VentureBeat a couple days ago. “We also know that the IPO is to begin trading [the] last week of April.”

Overall, Dunn & Bradstreet analyst Lee Simmons told Venturebeat, “There is a lot of investor enthusiasm” about the offering.

“Facebook is being compared most often to Google,” he said. “Analysts see a lot of similarities between both companies. Their revenue growth is very similar… [but] the Facebook IPO will most likely dwarf Google’s.”

Image courtesy of Jolie O’Dell

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