Twitter Takes First Step Toward IPO?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Twitter has added an investment banker to its staff. This has prompted speculation that the company may begin the process for an initial public offering.

Of course, investors could be gun-shy after the collapses of the share prices of Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN) and Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA). Twitter has not demonstrated that it can bring in a critical mass of advertising, at least not enough for it to be considered a large media company. Analysts estimate that the company could be worth $10 billion currently, which may be much to pricey for Wall Street.

The New York Times says of the new Twitter corporate development chief:

The company has hired Cynthia Gaylor, a managing director at Morgan Stanley, to be its head of corporate development, Alexander Macgillivray, Twitter’s chief lawyer, said in a tweet on Thursday.

Adding:

Over her career, Ms. Gaylor has worked on technology deals including the sale of Zappos to Amazon.com, according to her profile on LinkedIn. More recently, she has advised on financing transactions like initial public offerings.

Among her clients are Facebook, Zynga, Netflix and LinkedIn, the LinkedIn profile says. She joined Morgan Stanley in 2006 after working at Hambrecht & Quist, which became part of JPMorgan Chase.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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