One of the most anticipated events in .com history is finally upon us: Facebook has filed for its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and everybody is speculating about how high the company’s valuation will go.

We asked a couple of experts to shed some light on the matter: Professor Mark T. Leary, of Olin Business School, believes that at IPO the firm will have a total market value in the $80 – $100 billion range:

“I don’t doubt that investors will be willing to pay that price for the shares, based on the valuations coming out of their past private issuances and recent online auctions for private shares,” he says.

But just because people are willing to pay that price, does it actually mean that Facebook is worth that much? [Read more...]