How Many More Banks Does Facebook Need for Its IPO?
It's hard not to make a cheesy pun about Facebook friending practically all of the major banks on Wall Street for its upcoming IPO, but it looks like Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and CitiGroup will be joining Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Barclays and Allen & Co. in bringing the company public according to an unnamed source in Bloomberg Businessweek on Friday afternoon. With three more financial giants to support it, Facebook reportedly now has a $5 billion line of credit it can use to fight an impending patent infringement lawsuit by Yahoo and pay some of its taxes after the IPO.
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While it's unclear how much of a case Yahoo has, earlier this week, the company "asked Facebook this week to license technologies covered by its intellectual property, and threatened to take legal action if no agreement is reached," the magazine's Serena Saitto explains. According to Investor Place's Brad Moon, Yahoo is claiming between 10 to 20 patents, but has not named them. Should Yahoo and Facebook end up in court, the worst that could happen would be that Facebook must comply and cancel features that are dependent on Yahoo-patented technology. And at best, Mark Zuckerberg and company end up embarrassed, but chances are no matter what, they'll end up rich.
