Wealth Managers Take Note: Behold The Arrival Of The "Facebooker" Multi-Millionaires

Tom Burroughes

17 May 2012

The wealth management industry should brace itself for a new “liquidity event” – the arrival of “Facebooker” millionaires, as many as 970 of them, new research shows.

Of the 970 current or past staff slated to become at least millionaires from the Facebook IPO due tomorrow, 165 of them are or will become ultra high net worth millionaires, most obviously its founders Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, Andrew McCollum and Dustin Moskovitz. All of these men are UHNW individuals or close to being so, according to a report by WealthInsight.

At a time of market volatility and worries about the eurozone, the influx of hundreds of such people into the ranks of the wealthy comes as a welcome development, although much depends on how realistic are the valuations of the IPO.

“Post-IPO, many current employees will no doubt be tempted to follow their former colleagues out of the door. Many of these people will no doubt start new ventures or invest in existing ones,” the report said. “With regard to their finances, on the one hand Facebookers are keenly interested in intelligent and exciting investment opportunities. On the other, young as they are, wealth preservation is a major concern. Thus an approach that wraps these two preferences in a fully tailored approach is likely to be well received,” it said.

I don't want to be American any more

The creation of a new class of millionaires has already caused a political stir. Saverin has moved to renounce his US citizenship and thereby free himself from the clutches of the US worldwide system of tax, an issue that has become controversial due to recent tax compliance legislation such as the FATCA Act.

According to the report, the company is expected tomorrow to sell a total of 337.4 million shares for between $28 and $35 per share, raising up to $12 billion. (Some media reports have suggested an even more ambitious fund-raising target of up to $16 billion.)

Inevitably, memories of the dotcom bubble and some of the inflated valuations seen at the time have created some skepticism about the Facebook valuations.

Values

“By many accounts, Facebook’s IPO is overpriced. Its expected share price will value the company at a multiple of between 79 times and 99 times company earnings. This is well above the current multiples (as of May 2012) for other tech companies such as Apple (13.7x) and Google (18.6x) although it is still well below Linkedin (695x).

But setting aside any queries about the sustainability of such prices, the report said that on an IPO price of $30 per sahre, there will be 165 UHNW individuals, 295 mid-tier millionaires (those with at least $5 million but less than $30 million) and 500 HNW individuals.

“To put the scale of Facebook’s IPO as a liquidity event into perspective, Facebook’s 165 UHNW individuals will increase California’s UHNW individual population (which now stands at 7,170) by 2.3 per cent,” the report added.