Hopefully the SEC won't regulate secondmarket.com to death.
I'm curious what made them pursue this - if there are no complaints, this move is just to keep themselves relevant or to protect the Wall Street buddies.
I'm curious what made them pursue this - if there are no complaints, this move is just to keep themselves relevant or to protect the Wall Street buddies.
Having to file with the SEC doesn't force Facebook to go the route of a traditional IPO, they can continue to sell shares on limited access marketplaces such as SecondMarket -- they will just need to start publishing audited financials.
You can see the results of these worries in facebook contracts that prevent current employees from selling their vested shares and the deal they struck in 2008 that allowed employees to sell only a 20% share of their vested options. If they were able to prevent ex-employees from selling their shares on the secondary markets they obviously would. So it would make some sense if the companies themselves are complaining about the practice to the SEC.