The Biggest Winners from Twitter’s IPO
When any hotly followed,
widely known private company goes public, there's usually a big buzz among the
ranks of individual investors – the kind of people who are saving money for
their kids' college educations, their own retirement or maybe that beach house
they've always dreamed of. It's no secret, though, that the people who profit
the most from initial public offerings are most often the big-time,
behind-the-scenes investors the general public rarely hears about.
Related Article published earlier :Twitter’s IPO To Bring Huge Windfall For Initial Investors
Twitter's IPO is no
different. Here's a short list of some of the investors poised to score big, at
least on paper, off the social networking site's coming out party:
1. Evan Williams. The cofounder and early Twitter CEO owns more than 56 million
shares in the company, making him the biggest single shareholder. Based on
Twitter’s IPO price of $26, Williams' stake is worth more than $1.4 billion,
and as the stock price soars Williams’ net worth will too. In addition to
founding Twitter, Williams also founded Blogger, a site he later sold to
Google.
2. Jack Dorsey. The Twitter chairman owns more than 23 million shares, making
his stake in the company worth more than $598 million. Not bad work for a 36
year old. Dorsey is also associated with Square, a very successful cellphone
app which lets you make and receive payments on your phone.
3. Dick Costolo. Twitter’s CEO owns more than seven million shares in the social
networking site. At $26 per share, his stake is worth around $182 million. Not
a bad haul for a former stand-up comedian.
4. Adam Bain.
Twitter's president of global revenue. The 40-year-old's 1.7 million shares are
worth more than $44 million at the $26 IPO price, or close to $8 million based
on the afternoon trading price near $47. Bain was a former employee of Rupert
Murdoch's NewsCorp.
5. Peter Currie. The Twitter director is a veteran of 1990s browser-war casualty
Netscape as well as Facebook. His 300,000 shares are worth $7.8 million at the
IPO price.
While Twitter’s founders
and top executives are not cashing out their shares, some venture capital
investors also struck it big with the company’s IPO. That list includes Suhail
Rizvi, the secretive founder of New York-based private equity firm Rizvi
Traverse, which owned 17.9 percent of Twitter in its funds before the IPO, and
Benchmark Capital, which owned nearly 7 percent of the company.
For individual investors
mesmerized by the eye-popping examples listed above, it’s worth remembering:
Snapping up the stock today may (or may not) leads to gains in the long run,
but highly hyped IPOs like this one generate wealth for the already wealthy. It
still takes money to make money.
This article was
first published by JOHN GRGURICH in The
Fiscal Times on November 7, 2013
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