Facebook Said to Allow Employees to Sell $1 Billion Worth of Shares

Facebook is apparently gearing up for even more financial gymnastics. There's been plenty of coverage of the Goldman Sachs deal, in which the bank but also some of its clients invested in the social network. Now it looks like the company wants to make some employees quite happy by enabling them to sell some of their shares in an upcoming tender offer.

Nothing has been decided, but, according to All Things D, Facebook may be selling $1 billion worth of shares, from employees, at an even higher valuation than the last time, $60 billion.

If this goes through, it's going to make some early employees pretty happy, or at least pretty rich.

Employees which were probably getting very tired of Facebook postponing an IPO, after which they'd have a chance to sell some of their shares.

Of course, the company's value going up exponentially probably helped them get over their frustration.

Facebook would not be making anything this time around, not that it needs any more money, so it would take the step simply to please its employees who would otherwise have to wait at least one more year before having a chance to sell.

That is, if Facebook does go public in one year's time, while it has pledged to start disclosing financial details in 2012 it hasn't actually said it will file for an IPO.

Regulations in the US prevent companies from having more than 500 shareholders unless they make certain details about their business public.

Facebook actually tried to get around that, with the help of Goldman Sachs, by having the bank offer a "special purpose vehicle," in which selected clients would be able to pay for a stake in Facebook but which would be controlled by the bank.

Finally, Facebook relented and announced that it was going to go over the 500 investors limit this year anyway so it might as well start revealing financial details.