Underwriters for Facebook’s much anticipated initial public offering purchased shares of the stock Friday to keep the price from falling below $38 after NASDAQ OMX Group faced technical difficulties, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment. The underwriters purchased the stock after there was a problem delivering trade-execution messages during trading early in the day, a source said. Meanwhile, other social media such as Zynga and LinkedIn were hit in trading on Friday as Facebook flooded the market in one of the biggest trading days in history.
