Shares of Facebook have been halted on the pre-IPO secondary market until January 27th at the request of the company. Trades can still be made, but won’t be processed until that date according to Bloomberg News.
The CEO of SecondMarket Inc., the exchange on which Facebook shares are trading, said that companies often stop trading briefly in order to get a count of the number of shareholders a company has in preparation for an IPO filing. Facebook is widely expected to make a public offering this year.
Facebook’s share price according to sharespost.com is $34, which values the company at around $80 billion.