Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Skips Pre-IPO Meeting With Wall Street Representatives

NEW YORK - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg skipped a pre-IPO meeting with Wall Street analysts and bankers at the social network's headquarters on Monday and does not plan to have a hands-on role in selling the stock listing to analysts and others, the Wall Street Journal reported.

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Asked about his absence, CFO David Ebersman said Zuckerberg would focus his time on developing the social network's services rather than play a financial market role, it cited people familiar with the situation as saying.

But a decision on Zuckerberg's exact role and involvement in the so-called roadshow to promote the IPO to investors or the larger IPO process hasn't been made yet, the paper said.

The three-hour session, led by COO Sheryl Sandberg and Ebersman, allowed Wall Street folks to ask questions they may get from investors as they consider buying Facebook's stock.

Executives didn't detail its plans for translating its user growth into revenue, but said that Facebook is ahead of Google and its Google+ platform by as much as 140 times in terms of average time spent, the Journal reported.

At about $10 billion, the Facebook IPO, expected to be completed around May, would be the largest from a U.S. Web company ever.

Facebook has told Wall Street representatives that it is planning to pay a below-average fee of 1.1 percent to underwriters of its IPO. That would be only half the average fee for deals of $5 billion or more in the past five years, the Journal said, citing data from deal tracking firm Dealogic.

Email: Georg.SzalaI@thr.com

Twitter: @georgszalai