Banco Santander SA raising $2.6B in capital

According to Bloomberg, Santander (SAN) is planning to raise $2.6B in capital. They seek to swap preferred shares for ordinary shares to boost their capital. The price will be the average of shares traded between Dec. 14 and 23. This is occurring to address the 11.5B euro shortfall European regulators identified.


What does this mean? It dilutes shares. So if you are a shareholder it dilutes your ownership of the bank. But on the other hand, if it couldn't boost its capital, what would be the result of a capital shortfall?

Notable Zynga investor - Alisher Usnanov

According to Barrons this weekend, it has come to light that Alisher Usmanov is a Zynga investor. The Russian oligarch is one of the richest men in the world with Forbes estimating his wealth at $18B, and ranking him number 35 in the world. His investment vehicle, Digital Sky Technology fund also owns shares of Facebook and Twitter. 

For those of you curious about him, here is something on YouTube about his stake in the English football club, Arsenal. 

Update: Zynga filed updated S-1

Touted as the largest American tech IPO since Google. They have just filed a new amended S-1 ahead of their roadshow. 


According to Tech Crunch, Mark Pincus won't be selling but his investors will. Among them are Kleiner Perkins, Google, Silver Lake, and Tiger Global. 


Valuations have not changed since the last post. 

Update: Zynga IPO

Businessweek has stated that Zynga is planning to raise about $900M in the IPO with shares to price between $8 to $10. 10% or less of outstanding shares are expected to be sold. This would give it a valuation of about $10B. Compare that to the two current leaders in the space: Activision Blizzard (ATVI) with a market cap of $14.2B and Electronic Arts (ERTS) with $7.69B. 


Sharepost implied valuation currently stands at $12.9B.

Potential bank failure prompted central bank action?

What prompted the central banks to act in a rare collaborative effort yesterday? Was it a major European bank on the verge of failure? Here is what Forbes had to say:

Big European Bank Failure Averted: What Central Banks did not tell us, Forbes