Monday, June 27, 2011

There’s a New Way to Own a Piece of Facebook Before Its IPO

If you’re looking to invest in Facebook before its IPO but not privy to the secondary markets where shares of the company have been trading, there’s a new (albeit somewhat indirect) way to buy a stake.

The publicly traded investment fund GSV Capital announced on Monday that it has purchased 225,000 shares of Facebook at a price of $29.28 per share, which values the social network at $70 billion.

The investment represents about 15% of GSV’s portfolio — enough to drive up shares of GSV (which trades on NASDAQ under the symbol GSVC) by more than 30% as of midday trading on Monday.

GSV does not currently show any other companies in its “portfolio” on its site, but the firm also recently announced an investment in Kno, a digital textbook outfit that raised $46 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz last year.

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