Investment Firm General Atlantic Buys Stake in Facebook; values FB at $65B

[The Straight Story]

Investment Firm General Atlantic Buys Stake in Facebook; values FB at $65B

http://www.breakingnews.com/

[hunter]

1. Crazy. Facebook is the latest AOL.

Facebook could evaporate tomorrow just like AOL did.

Somebody's probably writing the application that will blow them away right now.

[Hannah Bell]

2. General Atlantic is the 15th largest private equity firm in the world

(2010 PEI 300) with approximately $15 billion of assets under management.

General Atlantic was founded in 1980 by secretive billionaire Charles F. Feeney<1> to invest on behalf of the Atlantic Philanthropies, which he had endowed. The firm was initially headed by Edwin Cohen, who had previously been a partner of McKinsey & Company. Cohen was followed by Steven Denning who was a founding member of the firm and as of 2010 remained with the firm as GA's chairman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atlantic.

Charles F. Feeney (born April 23, 1931 in Elizabeth, N.J.),<1> is an Irish American businessman and philanthropist and founder of The Atlantic Philanthropies, one of the largest private foundations in the world. He made his fortune as a co-founder with Robert Warren Miller of the Duty Free Shoppers Group. The concept of "duty free shopping" - offering high-end concessions to travelers, free of import taxes - was in its infancy when, along with Miller, Feeney founded DFS on November 7, 1960. DFS began operations in Hong Kong (where it retains its corporate headquarters), later expanding to Europe and other continents.

Feeney, an Irish-American with dual citizenship,<2> was born in New Jersey during the Great Depression. He served as a U.S. Air Force radio operator during the Korean War, and began his career selling duty-free liquor to US Naval personnel at Mediterranean ports in the 1950s.<3>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Feeney