Facebook continues to look for investment money even as the social networking service is reporting making preparations for what could be the biggest tech themed IPO in some time. Now there"s word that the country of China wants in on this growing company. According to an article on Business Insider, citing unnamed sources, China is seeking to acquire what is being termed as "a huge chunk" of Facebook. Specific numbers were not given in the article. The same article also uses a second unnamed source to claim that Citibank is thinking of investing of as much as $1.2 billion into Facebook. The article claims that the money would come from two sources; China and an unnamed Middle Eastern country.
The article claims that even if China were to buy a portion of Facebook, it would be of the non-voting stock kind which means that the country would have no say in the internal business decisions of the company. Of course any investment in the privately owned Facebook would have to be approved by the company but its likely that its founder Mark Zuckerberg would say yes. Indeed he seems to be interested in expanding Facebook to China over the concerns of the company"s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
Last week a small private purchase of Facebook stock revealed the company"s current value to be about $70 billion. The company has continued to add more and more users with a recent update from a third party claiming that Facebook now has 750 million worldwide users.