Facebook float to create new network of millionaires

Facebook's flotation on the stock market is to make a new network of millionaires and billionaires, including a graffiti artist who accepted stock for painting the walls of the firm's California headquarters and Mark Zuckerberg's college roommate.

The world's largest social network yesterday announced its initial public offering, which will aim to raise $5 billion (£3.1bn). The company started in Zuckerberg's university dorm room is expected to be worth between $75 billion (£47bn) and $100 billion (£63bn) when shares start trading later in the year.

Zuckerberg, the 27-year-old chief executive of Facebook, holds 533.8m shares, which would be worth $28.4 billion based at the top end valuation of $100bn. He owns 28.4% of the company and has 57% of the voting rights.

This compares to Bill Gates's 49.2% controlling stake in Microsoft when it went public in 1986, and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin's 15% stake in their company when it floated in 2004.

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Sherly Sandberg, the former Google executive who joined Facebook as chief operating officer, has 1.9m shares, or about 0.1% of the company, but the IPO filing indicates that she is to earn an extra 38.1m shares after the float. That would make her one of the richest women in Silicon Valley.

Billionaire Peter Thiel was one of Facebook's first major investors, leading a $500,000 cash injection in the nascent firm in 2004. He now owns 44.7m shares, which would be worth around $2bn.

Bono's venture capital firm Elevation Partners paid $210m (£128m) in November 2009 for a stake in the business, which would also be worth close to $2bn.

Accel Partners, which invested in Facebook seven years ago, holds 201.4 million shares, while DST Global, the investment firm led by the Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, is one of the biggest external shareholders, with a 7% stake.

But one of the most startling beneficiaries is artist David Choe, who swapped his graffiti talents for shares in Facebook, which could be worth up to $200m when the stock publicly starts trading later this year.

The New York Times reports that Choe was invited in 2005 to paint murals at the offices of Facebook in Palo Alto, California, by Sean Parker, the former Napster executive who was the firm's then president.

Choe was offered payment of "thousands of dollars", or stock worth the same amount. Despite considering the idea of Facebook at the time to be "ridiculous and pointless", he opted for the stock.

It is thought that Choe was given between 0.1 to 0.25% of the firm, which would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars on the $100bn valuation. This payout would surpass the record-breaking $200.7 million auction in 2008 for the art of Damien Hirst.

According to the filing information, Zuckerberg's father, who is a New York dentist, also owns two million shares of stock, while his college roommate Dustin Moskovitz holds 133.8 million shares.

But the list of shareholders also shows signs of Facebook's checkered history. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the twins who took Facebook to court over claims that Zuckerberg stole their idea, own around 1.2m shares as part of their settlement with the firm.