Business

Facebook CEO knew about overpriced IPO and dumped shares, new lawsuit claims

Mark Zuckerberg is losing even more friends.

Another group of disgruntled Facebook investors has reportedly sued the the social media guru, saying he made out like a bandit over the site’s botched IPO.

This latest class-action lawsuit claims Zuckerberg knew Facebook was horribly overpriced at $38 per share when trading began last month, TMZ reported today.

He used that inside information to quickly unload shares, in a dirty billion-dollar move, the lawsuit claimed. FB closed at $27.72 a share and was down 27 percent since going public this past Friday.

The complaint specifically calls out Zuckerberg and his pals of allegedly hiding Facebook’s basic business flaw, — that there’s not nearly enough advertising revenue to support the $38 opening price.

Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs all cited that basic problem, but the insight was only “selectively disclosed” to some of the largest investors, according to the lawsuit cited by TMZ.

Analysts have also maintained doubts on Facebook’s valuation, its prospects in the mobile market and its ability to compete with Google Inc.

Meanwhile, companies in the early stages of going public are raising questions about whether they want to list with Nasdaq, The Post reported today.

The questions, coming two weeks after Bob Greifeld’s exchange botched the largest, most anticipated initial public offering in a generation – Facebook’s $16 billion coming-out party – are the first indication that Nasdaq’s headaches over the snafu are likely to linger.

“There’s no question, this Facebook situation has put on the table the question of Nasdaq’s market structure and its market quality,” one exchange expert told The Post.

It was also reported Monday that Facebook is developing technology that would allow children younger than 13 years old to use the social-networking site under parental supervision, a step that could help the company tap a new pool of users for revenue but also inflame privacy concerns.

Mechanisms being tested include connecting children’s accounts to their parents’ and controls that would allow parents to decide whom their kids can “friend” and what applications they can use, people who have spoken with Facebook executives about the technology said. The under-13 features could enable Facebook and its partners to charge parents for games and other entertainment accessed by their children, the people said.

Facebook currently bans users under 13. But many kids lie about their ages to get accounts, putting the company in an awkward position regarding a federal law that requires sites to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal data from children.

Any attempt to give younger kids access to the site would be extraordinarily sensitive, given regulators’ already heightened concerns about how Facebook protects user privacy. But Facebook, concerned that it faces reputational and regulatory risks from children already using the service despite its rules, believes it has little choice but to look into ways of establishing controls that could formalize their presence on the site, people familiar with the matter said.

With NewsCore