Will David Ebersman be the fall guy for the botched Facebook IPO?

That escalated quickly. As Facebook’s stock continues to plummet, now half of where it started, the New York Times bluntly laid the blame for it on the company’s CFO, David Ebersman. Now everyone seems to have an opinion about the man who has seen much less of the spotlight. Andrew Ross Sorkin, the writer of the original article, said:

Mr. Ebersman’s name, however, is mentioned only occasionally, usually in passing and typically only among Silicon Valley’s cognoscenti.

And yet if there is one single individual more responsible than any other for the staggering mispricing of Facebook’s I.P.O., it is Mr. Ebersman. He signed off on the ever-increasing offer price, which ended up at $38 after the company had originally planned a price range of $29 to $34.

Have you ever been to an auction where the selling party told a buyer to reduce their price because they were worried that the item might not hold its value ? Neither have I. If the CFO of Facebook came on SharkTank and told me that he was able to sell his shares to the public for $38 a share, but turned down the opportunity, I would crush him for being an idiot.