"Wah, Zuckerberg is Snubbing Us, Waaaaahhh"

Wall Street crybabies need to STFU about the whole “Zuckerberg is snubbing us” thing.  Of course he is.  Because he doesn’t need you, dawg.  You are an inconvenience, a necessary evil on his way to where he’s headed.  An irritating little tax he has to pay, in both time and a little bit of money.  And then you can go walk off a pier as far as he’s concerned.

Zuckerberg needs Wall Street like I need to start each day with a basket of warm, buttery croissants slathered in Belgian chocolate sauce, which is to say not at all.

Let’s recap:

Morgan Stanley, as lead underwriter, is essentially working for bargain basement rates in acting as lead underwriter for the IPO.  The company is selling $6 billion worth of stock and only paying the syndicate 1.1%, a huge discount to the typical IPO underwriting concession.  We’re only talking about chump change for the i-banks to split here.  Morgan essentially wants the prestige of being the lead badly enough to have fought this battle based on price – something Wall Street has almost never had to do.  If that doesn’t tell you that things have changed and the balance of power has shifted, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Zuckerberg is not showing up to the Wall Street roadshow as of this writing.  Why? Because he doesn’t have to.  Because he could mail NY a box of his old sneakers and they would cut him a check for it, sight unseen.  Because they will buy the hell out of this IPO on game day pretty much no matter what – the board of directors of Facebook could pose for a company photo with all of their middle fingers extended and the deal would still be more than ten times oversubscribed.  And really, let’s say he did fly out here for the roadshow, what makes anyone on the buyside or any of the selling group think that he needs to stand in front of a power point and “tell his story” or “make his case”?  It’s a joke, you know what Facebook is and if you don’t like the company or its model, don’t buy it.  There will be plenty of others to fill your slot.

Zuckerberg has been able to do run this company and raise money from the Valley for years now, he’s never needed The Street’s bankers before and only requires their participation now for the big liquidity event.  So the NY banking community whining about his non-presence now is rather embarrassing and galling to say the least.

Even if he changes his mind and shows up here, you still got snubbed, deal with it.