Facebook IPO: bank support spares blushes as shares end first day flat Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's 28-year-old founder and chief executive, had earlier rung the bell remotely to mark the start of Nasdaq trading hours at a packed outdoor event at the company's headquarters, 2,500 miles away in Menlo Park in California's Silicon Valley. Retail investors were among the biggest buyers after Facebook limited their share of the flotation to just 15pc of the 421m shares sold. "Emotion rather than the company's fundamentals are going to be driving the shares over the next few days," said Arvind Bhatia, an analyst at Sterne Agee. Analysts suggested the shares might have failed to spark in the same way as previous high-profile tech IPOs because underwriters were too aggressive in pricing the deal. The shares were priced at the top end of a range that Facebook had lifted over the last two weeks. By comparison Google saw its shares climb 18pc on their opening day, Groupon's shares gained 31pc and Yahoo! rose an eye-watering 154pc. Despite the disappointing performance, the valuation Facebook commanded is still the biggest ever for a US initial public offering, eclipsed globally only by the Agricultural Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. By the end of the day, Facebook was worth more than households names including Pepsi, Ford and Walt Disney.