Friday, April 15, 2011

Facebook Stakeholder Usmanov Says Web Investment Returns Peaked

Alisher Usmanov, who together with fellow Russian billionaire Yuri Milner owns about 10 percent of Facebook Inc., said he’s cautious to invest more money into Internet companies as prices may have peaked.

“Investments in Internet companies start to bring less profits compared with two or three years ago when we began to invest in them almost at a startup level,” Usmanov said in a phone interview. The $500 million March acquisition of a 5 percent stake in Chinese Web retailer 360buy.com through Usmanov and Milner’s DST Global may have been his last big direct Web investment for some time, he said.

Usmanov and Milner are among Internet investors that have been backing some of Silicon Valley’s fastest growing businesses. Their firm led a $135 million investment in daily- deals site Groupon Inc. last year and was part of a group that put $180 million into Zynga Game Network Inc., a social-gaming service, in 2009.

“There’s certainly a lot of concern that we’re getting into a real bubble around Internet companies, and I can understand that some people are getting cautious,” said Keith Arundale, a London-based venture capital consultant and former director in PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s global technology group. Very high valuations “seem to be extending to a lot of Internet companies” both large and small, he said. Source: bloomberg.com

Eh Alisheraka, bubbles are bubbles, when are they going to pop is the question, if you say bubbles with your roubles market should react is what you might be expecting, GS analysts talk alot....

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