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Facebook raises $500-million It appears there's no stopping the runaway success of Facebook. The social networking phenomenon has raised $500-million (U.S.) from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a Russian investor, Digital Sky Technologies,The New York Times reports, pegging its value at $50-billion.
The company would now be worth more than the likes of eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner, the newspaper says, adding an investment from Goldman indicates just how forceful Facebook has become. The cash injection, it adds, will allow Facebook to attract key employees, come out with new products and maybe even take over other companies.
"When you think back to the early days of Google, they were kind of ignored by Wall Street investors, until it was time to go public," Silicon Valley investor Chris Sacca, who holds a stake in Twitter and at one time worked for Google, told the newspaper. "This time, the Street is smartening up. They realize there are true growth businesses out here. Facebook has become a real business, and investors are coming out here and saying, 'We want a piece of it."'
Euro crisis: New Year, same old Europe's debt crisis opened the new year with the same old: The euro dipped against the U.S. dollar Monday as the credit struggle of several members of the now 17-nation currency bloc continued in force.
What's in store for 2011?
European bondholders and policy makers face severe headwinds that may make a restructuring of sovereign debt necessary, Moody's Analytics says in a report that sees the continent's credit crisis as the biggest threat to the global recovery.
"Europe might still be able to muddle through, but an orderly restructuring of sovereign debt is looking more desirable as the damage to budget cuts mounts and as high-debt countries struggle to escape recession," economist Andres Carbacho-Burgos said in a recent report.
Oil prices high, but no surge seen Oil prices are challenging the $100 (U.S.) level again, but analysts don't expect a 2008-style surge to the $150 area, a Reuters analysis suggests.
Energy firms are boosting their spending before there's a supply crunch, while the U.S. dollar has firmed up, the news agency reported, while short-term fundamentals, such as more crude in storage and more refining capacity, are solid.
Analysts expect average prices to climb by about 8 per cent this year.
Fiat eyes majority stake in Chrysler Fiat today set the stage for boosting its 20-per-cent stake in Chrysler to majority control, splitting its auto making business from the unit that produces trucks and tractors.
"If Chrysler is listed this year, we should think about speeding up the option of increasing our stake," Fiat chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne told reporters, according to Reuters.
He said there are no plans at this point to merge Fiat and Chrysler, but he is looking at boosting Fiat's ownership of the U.S. auto maker to 51 per cent this year.
Boyd Erman's Morning Meeting For all the talk of the BRIC countries, the bond market is betting on the U.S., saying U.S. companies are less of a risk than any others in the world, Streetwise columnist Boyd Erman reports today.
That's the logical takeaway from figures reported by Bloomberg News that show that the yield over Treasury bonds that investors demand on U.S. corporate bonds is lower than the global average for the first time on record.
From today's Report on Business