plumsauce - 7:34 pm on Aug 5, 2004 (gmt 0)

Google plans to sell 14.1 million shares itself, with another 10.5 million to be sold by existing shareholders.

... to raise about $3.3 billion.

google has $549 million in cash.

the unregistered shares and options total about 30 million shares. at $100/share, that's about $3 billion in potential liabilities, disregarding the effect of exercise prices on the options. (caution: i am not a PHD!)

even at $20/share liability it wipes out the cash.

at full value it wipes out the proceeds of the ipo.

google avoided investment bankers. any investment bank worth the name would have figured out something was wrong during its due diligence.

it only takes one shareholder to upset the apple cart. two to make a class action. yahoo is a shareholder. yahoo has deep pockets. yahoo has lawyers.