Friday, May 25, 2012

The Facebook IPO Screwup Could Be Curtains For NASDAQ





It's hard to overstate how big a disaster the Facebook IPO has been for NASDAQ, one of the United States' two big stock exchanges, BusinessInsider writes.

People often forget that the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) are private companies, just like the companies that list on them. As such, the exchanges compete fiercely for "clients"—which in this case are public companies looking for a place to list their stocks. 
15 years ago, in the 1990s, the relative positioning of NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange were clear:  The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was the exchange for big, boring, prestigious industrial companies.  NASDAQ was the exchange for exciting, disruptive technology companies. In recent years, for example, the NYSE has won hot tech companies like LinkedIn and Pandora. NASDAQ has also won its share of tech clients, including Groupon. But now, with each new tech company, it's a fair fight between the exchanges, whereas they once all went to NASDAQ.

The battle for the Facebook listing, not surprisingly, was intense. For NASDAQ, especially, winning was critical, because if NASDAQ had lost Facebook, its positioning as the "home for innovative tech companies" would really have begun to slip….But what should have been a crowning achievement for the exchange has now become what one tech insider describes as a "complete cosmic catastrophe."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/by-the-way-the-facebook-ipo-screwup-could-be-curtains-for-nasdaq-2012-5

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