This is not really a story. The 500-shareholder rule stipulates that companies must start releasing data 90 days after the end of the year on which they pass th

This is not really a story. The 500-shareholder rule stipulates that companies must start releasing data 90 days after the end of the year on which they pass that threshold. That's why FB did the Goldman deal at the beginning of the year--so they'd have the maximum time possible during which they could operate as a private company while still doing a raise that put them over the maximum. And the $100bn number is also not much news. There's a liquidity premium for trading on the public markets. The highest LinkedIn trade on the private markets was less than half of their lowest post-IPO valuation. FB can't expect the same premium, but 20% is not a stretch. Employees have been grumbling about illiquid stock since, well, long before Facbeook existed. That's one of the big reasons companies go public; it was a big reason for Microsoft's IPO, for example. Basically, you could have written this story on the first working day of the year.