Stock Offering

Zynga Inc., the maker of online social games FarmVille and Words With Friends, will seek to raise $400 million in a secondary public stock offering and rejigger when employees can sell their shares. The moves are designed to help prevent a sudden drop in the price of the San Francisco company's stock. In December, Zynga took in $1 billion in its initial public offering with an eye toward financing an ambitious strategy to expand its products both internationally and to mobile devices.

LinkedIn is connecting with investors. The dominant professional networking site was one of the few bright spots Friday on Wall Street. Its shares skyrocketed nearly 18% to $89.96 in the single biggest one-day jump since its initial public stock offering in May. LinkedIn's stock has doubled in value since the IPO. The jet fuel powering the professional networking site: its fourth-quarter earnings, released Thursday. Revenue more than doubled from the previous year to nearly $168 million.

Facebook said it's working closely with Zynga to propel growth for both companies, according to the social networking giant's amended filing for its initial public offering. Wednesday's disclosure was similar to one that Zynga made as it prepared for its December IPO. Zynga said at the time that Facebook accounts for 90% of its sales. Zynga generated 12% of Facebook's revenue in 2011. Facebook said that it has an agreement with Zynga to reach a series of growth targets. It signed the contract with Zynga last year.

No one knows Facebook better than Facebook. Only seconds after the company's huge initial public stock offering was announced, Facebook users flooded the social network with comments. "Based on my news feeds, you would think Zuck just took over the world. Oh, Facebook," said Amanda Coolong, producer of a technology news site. "OOO What I could give to be able to get in on this," wrote Alexander Henry Sargent, expressing the oft-repeated hope that shares would be available to the common user.

Facebook has filed papers for what's expected to be the largest initial public offering ever to come out of Silicon Valley and one of the largest in U.S. history. Ending months of breathless speculation, the 8-year-old social networking company has submitted registration documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that set a preliminary goal of raising $5 billion. Facebook is expected to be valued at $75 billion to $100 billion. Final pricing will not be set for months, and the size of the IPO probably will increase with investor demand.

Wall Street is about to get Facebook fever. The social networking giant with nearly 1 billion users is expected to file papers any day now to sell stock to the public. The timing stems partly from federal rules that would require Facebook to begin disclosing its financial information in April because of its phenomenal growth. Beyond minting an estimated 1,000 new millionaires at the company, Facebook's initial public stock offering could provide a huge boost to Wall Street investment banks sorely in need of a hot stock to excite investors.

Penetrating the Chinese movie market has long presented any number of challenges to Hollywood studios, from quotas to censorship to cultural sensitivities Add raising money to the list of potential problems. Legendary East, the Chinese film venture established this summer by film finance and production company Legendary Entertainment and its chairman, budding Hollywood mogul Thomas Tull, has canceled plans to raise $220.5 million on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this year after it was unable to find enough investors.

The painful drop in the stock market has sucked the air out of initial public offerings. Companies have withdrawn their stock offerings this month at the fastest pace since the dark days of the 2008 global financial crisis, as suddenly gun-shy investors have lost interest in anything seen as even marginally risky. Beyond the negative effect on investors, the drying up of IPOs is one more obstacle in the path of the U.S. economy as companies have trouble raising cash to boost employment or to invest in new products or facilities, experts say. "It reflects a deterioration in business confidence and an unwillingness to expand the operations of companies," said Jane Caron, economist at Dwight Asset Management in Burlington, Vt. "That means less investment spending, less hiring and therefore less income, not only for the companies but for households.

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. 'Free' trial offers — The Federal Trade Commission has accused an Alberta, Canada, man and several companies of defrauding consumers of more than $450 million by luring them into "free" trial offers and then charging them for products or services they did not order. The FTC filed a lawsuit in the federal courthouse in Seattle against Jesse Willms and 10 of his companies, accusing them of obtaining victims' credit card numbers as part of free-trial offers and then billing the credit cards for products that were not ordered.

After canceling a stock offering and failing to raise private equity, independent studio the Film Department is shutting down. Headed by former Warner Bros. and Miramax Films executive Mark Gill, the Film Department saw only one of its movies released in the U.S. since launching in 2007: the Jamie Foxx-Gerard Butler thriller "Law Abiding Citizen. " That picture was released by Overture Films in 2009 and grossed a solid $72 million. The Film Department produced only two other movies, both romantic comedies.