Facebook today announced that it is commencing an underwritten registered public offering of 70,000,000 shares of its Class A common stock. A total of 27,004,761 shares are being offered by Facebook, and a total of 42,995,239 shares are being offered by certain selling stockholders, including 41,350,000 shares offered by Mark Zuckerberg. Standard & Poor?s has announced that, effective as of the close of trading on December 20, 2013, it plans to include Facebook's Class A common stock in the S&P 500 Index, which is comprised of 500 common stocks that S&P selects. Shares of Facebook's Class A common stock will be offered primarily to index funds whose portfolios are primarily based on stocks included in the S&P 500 Index.

Facebook intends to use the net proceeds of the offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes. The company will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders. Facebook expects that the majority of the net proceeds Mr. Zuckerberg will receive upon the sale of shares in the offering will be used to satisfy taxes that he will incur in connection with his exercise, in full, of an outstanding stock option to purchase 60,000,000 shares of Class B common stock.

Each Class B share gives the shareholder 10 votes, while each Class A share comes with one vote. The deal will give Zuckerberg control over nearly 63 percent of the voting power of the company's outstanding stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

J.P. Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Barclays are serving as joint bookrunners for the offering. BNP Paribas, Citigroup, RBC Capital Markets, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Piper Jaffray are serving as co-managers for the offering.

An effective registration statement relating to the securities was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 19, 2013.