Regulators are examining whether Morgan Stanley, the investment bank that shepherded Facebook through its highly publicized stock offering last week, selectively informed clients of an analyst’s negative report about the company before the stock started trading.
Rick Ketchum, the head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the self-policing body for the securities industry, said on Tuesday that the question is “a matter of regulatory concern” for his organization and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The top securities regulator for Massachusetts, William Galvin, said he had subpoenaed Morgan Stanley. Galvin said his office is investigating whether Morgan Stanley divulged to only some clients that one of its analysts had cut his revenue estimates for Facebook before the stock hit the market on Friday.
The bank said late on Tuesday that it “followed the same procedures for the Facebook offering that it follows for all IPOs,” referring to initial public offerings of stock. It said that its procedures complied with regulations.
The questions about the role played by Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for the deal, add to the confusion surrounding Facebook’s IPO. In the most hotly anticipated stock debut in years, the offering raised US$16 billion for the social networking company, valuing it at US$104 billion
On Tuesday, Robert Greifeld, the CEO of the NASDAQ Stock Market, acknowledged to shareholders of NASDAQ’s parent company that “clearly we had mistakes within the Facebook listing.”
The stock debut, originally set for 11am on Friday, was delayed more than half an hour because of technical problems at NASDAQ. Some brokerages were still sorting out the aftermath on Tuesday.
In the meantime, Facebook stock itself has been a disappointment. It fell US$3.03 on Tuesday to close at US$31 and has now fallen US$7, or more than 18 percent, from its offering price of US$38.
Reuters news service reported on Tuesday that a Morgan Stanley analyst, Scott Devitt, cut his estimate for Facebook’s revenue this year to US$4.85 billion from more than US$5 billion earlier. Reuters reported that it was unclear whether Morgan Stanley had told only select clients about the reduced estimate.
Morgan Stanley, in its statement, did not specifically address which clients might have been told about a reduced estimate from one of its analysts. It said that “a significant number” of analysts, including those from other firms underwriting the stock issue, had reduced their estimates for Facebook to reflect publicly available information about the company.
That was a reference to a May 9 regulatory filing in which Facebook said a shift by many Facebook users toward mobile devices might limit its revenue growth. Social media companies have struggled to make as much money as they would like from mobile advertising. Advertising accounts for more than 80 percent of Facebook’s overall revenue.
Morgan Stanley also said that revised analyst views were taken into account in setting the stock offering price at US$38 per share. Facebook, working with Morgan Stanley, first set a range of US$28 to US$35 for the offering price, then raised the range to US$34 to US$38 before setting it at US$38 on the night before the IPO.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday night that Facebook’s chief financial officer, David Ebersman, decided shortly before the stock debut to raise the number of shares the company would offer by 25 percent. The Journal, citing people familiar with the planning of the stock offering, also reported that Morgan Stanley had assured Ebersman there was plenty of demand for the stock.
A spokesman for Facebook Inc, which is based in Menlo Park, California, said late on Tuesday that the company had no comment.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy