NEW YORK— Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg kickstarted an action-packed trading day on Wall Street Friday morning, ringing the NASDAQ bell remotely from his company’s new Menlo park headquarters in California to mark the first day that the social media giant's shares will be publicly traded.
Facebook, whose $16 billion initial public offering is the largest tech offering on record, begins trading its shares on the electronic exchange at 11 a.m. Eastern time.
Shares are priced at $38 but are expected to close much higher by the end of the trading day, thanks to major demand from investors.
Zuckerberg, who just celebrated his 28th birthday this week, pressed a buzzer and signed a screen to mark the start of trading on the tech-heavy NASDAQ index.
More than 400 million shares have been sold so far at $38 each. At that value, Zuckerberg's stake in the company is estimated at $19.1 billion, catapulting the young CEO's wealth ahead of Google Inc. founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
More than 900 million users use Facebook each month, allowing the company to cash in on $3.7 billion in revenues last year, according to Bloomberg.
