Morgan Stanley’s $2.4 billion Facebook short
By Felix Salmon MAY 21, 2012
Matt Levine had a very wonky post on Friday afternoon about the dynamics of the Facebook IPO in general and of the very misunderstood greenshoe option in particular. Now that we’ve all had a nice relaxing weekend, it’s maybe worth revisiting that greenshoe, because it’s actually possible, given Facebook’s tumbling share price today, that Morgan Stanley will make a substantial amount of money on it.
First, it’s worth explaining how the greenshoe option is meant to work. In the IPO, the underwriting banks — there were lots of them, but let’s just call them all “Morgan Stanley”, for simplicity’s sake — sold 484 million shares of Facebook at $38 each. At the same time, they bought 421 million shares of Facebook from the company and its investors, at $37.582 each. The underwriter’s fee of 1.1% is the difference between those two numbers: if you buy at $37.582 and sell at $38, then you end up creaming off 1.1% of the total amount raised.
via Morgan Stanley’s $2.4 billion Facebook short | Felix Salmon.