Now lookie lookie! Our favorite search engine, Google, is looking at an IPO some time next year. And not only is this a shock, but they are also considering doing it with an auction.
An electronic auction would be designed to prevent a recurrence of the sort of financial scandals that have engulfed Wall Street since the collapse of the dotcom bubble, according to a person close to the company.
“It will be worth $15bn-$25bn,” said one person who has been involved in the process. “This has never happened before.”
An auction would allow all investors to bid for Google’s shares directly, rather than leave it to an investment bank to decide on the price of the shares and who should receive them.
One person close to Google complained that Wall Street’s existing method of selling shares allowed banks to set the prices of dotcom stock issues deliberately low, then hand them to favoured investment clients.
Many interesting points to consider here. On the one had, the auction would leave it to the people to set the stock price, but on the other hand, it could artificially value the stock. I’m not a big stock person, but I’d LOVE to own shares of Google, just because. Hell, I’d buy 10 if that’s all I could get. I know Dino hates that, and thinks you need to buy 10,000 shares of stock at a time. 🙂 Gav gav!