Goldman Named Twitter IPO's Lead Underwriter Despite Involvement In Facebook Mess

Goldman Part Of Facebook Mess, Gets Twitter IPO Job Anyway
Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., speaks with guests at an event hosted by the Australian Institute of Company Directors in Sydney, Australia, on Friday, July 26, 2013. A lack of U.S. business appetite for risk is constraining a recovery in the worlds largest economy where sentiment is lagging, Blankfein said. Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., speaks with guests at an event hosted by the Australian Institute of Company Directors in Sydney, Australia, on Friday, July 26, 2013. A lack of U.S. business appetite for risk is constraining a recovery in the worlds largest economy where sentiment is lagging, Blankfein said. Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Goldman Sachs will be the lead underwriter of Twitter’s initial public offering, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

The investment bank was one of a number of underwriters sued for allegedly deceiving investors in the wake of Facebook’s initial public offering.

The social network has only recently recovered from its disastrous IPO. After the company debuted on the NASDAQ selling shares at $38, the company's stock price dropped by more than half over the next three months. Investors initially lost billions.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleged that both Facebook and the underwriters failed to publicly provide revenue estimates that would have made the company look worse before its initial trading.

Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter of the Facebook IPO, eventually reached a $5 million deal in order to settle allegations that one of its employees attempted to “improperly influence” analysts in the lead up.

Other investment banks will likely join Goldman in shepherding Twitter to market and it's entirely possible that Morgan Stanley would be one of them.

Twitter announced its plants to go public in a Thursday tweet (and you can read more about that here):

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Jared Bernstein -- @econjared

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