Reuters News
(Reuters) – Groupon Inc. is set to raise $700 million in its initial public offering after the largest daily deals company increased the price and size of the deal on strong demand. Groupon priced the IPO at $20 per share, above the initial range of $16 to $18, two market sources said on Thursday. The […]
(Reuters) – Long an emblem of urban decline, Detroit is suddenly being marketed as America’s comeback kid. The campaign’s most vocal salesman is Dan Gilbert (pictured), the 49-year-old founder and chairman of Quicken Loans and the majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team. Gilbert, a Detroit native, isn’t content to just talk up his […]
(Reuters) - Mobile gaming company Rovio Entertainment said on Wednesday its hit game Angry Birds had reached a record 500 million downloads in less than two years since its launch.
"It's more than any game ever before," Rovio's marketing chief Peter Vesterbacka told a conference in Helsinki.
Unlike most mobile-game crazes, Angry Birds -- in which players use a slingshot to attack pigs who steal the birds' eggs -- has stayed at the top of the charts since it was launched for Apple's iPhone on Dec. 11, 2009.
Vesterbacka said the company's next aim was to reach 1 billion fans ...
(Reuters) - Groupon Inc could price shares in its initial public offering $1 or $2 above the current range of $16 to $18 per share, according to two investors who said they spoke with the lead underwriters on Wednesday.
Groupon is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell 30 million shares in the IPO, equivalent to a 4.7 percent stake. Books are expected to close later on Wednesday afternoon, with trading on the Nasdaq to begin on Friday.
If the IPO prices at $19 per share, that would value Groupon at $12.02 billion. If it prices at $20 per share, that would value the company at $12.7 billion.
No further information was immediately available. A spokesman for Groupon declined comment, as did a spokesman for lead underwriter Morgan Stanley. The other leads, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, were not immediately available for comment.
(Reuters) – Daily deals site Groupon told potential investors on Wednesday it can fend off competitors, but many portfolio managers told Reuters they were skeptical. Groupon Chief Executive Andrew Mason (pictured) told investors the company’s technology was unique and difficult to replicate. He described the company’s advantages, such as innovation, as “competitive moats” that will […]
(Reuters) – Nasdaq OMX Group expects between 15 and 20 more U.S. initial public offerings this year despite volatility in global markets that has dampened deal volume in recent months, a top executive at the company told Reuters. The company had initially expected 100-120 IPOs in 2011, but the final tally could be about 80% […]
(Reuters) - A boom in French Internet startups, nurtured by an emerging class of homegrown Web-savvy investors, is providing a welcome jolt to a country often stereotyped as captive to tradition and hostile to innovation.
A dozen executives and investors told Reuters last week that inter-generational coaching has been key to a budding Internet scene, clustered around the old Sentier garment district in central Paris -- now baptized Silicon Sentier.
Entrepreneurs such as Xavier Niel, who created multibillion euro public company Iliad SA in telecoms, and Marc Simoncini, founder of France's biggest dating website Meetic SA, have graduated to the big league and are financing, mentoring and inspiring budding techies.
Investors and executives also acknowledged the industry risked becoming a victim of its own success, as many of its best companies are snapped up by foreign competitors instead of growing independently to become France's own Google or Facebook.
"Smart young people in France today no longer dream of going to work as ...
(Reuters) – The FBI is investigating the massive advisory fee involved in Olympus Corp.’s takeover of a British company, a person familiar with the probe said, in a deepening scandal that has wiped out more than half the company’s value. The British CEO who says he was fired for questioning the $687 million payment to […]
(Reuters) – Zynga Inc. is currently planning to price its initial public offering and have its shares begin trading the week before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on November 24, two sources briefed on the offering said on Monday. The sources cautioned that the social gaming company’s plan has not been finalized and could change. They […]
(Reuters) - David Prend is one of the most respected investors in green technology -- but even he picks some losers.
Like the Department of Energy, Prend thought Solyndra, an innovative solar company, was a good bet. His venture capital firm, RockPort Capital, began investing in the company three years before the federal government gave the startup a loan guarantee. RockPort eventually put more than $63.5 million into Solyndra.
As revealed in emails released by the White House, Prend, who sat on the company's board, also touted the company to President Barack Obama's staff as a stellar example of green job creation and urged the president to visit its California plant.
But the Solyndra bet went bad -- for Prend, the DOE, and other investors such as Henry Kravis and Richard Branson. That's not so unusual in the field of green tech. A closer look at Prend's portfolio ...