Sunday, May 13, 2012

GOODBYE, AMERICA: Billionaire Facebook Cofounder Renounces Citizenship

Business Insider:

Billionaire Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin is renouncing his citizenship ahead of the company's IPO at the end of next week.


Saverin is the cofounder who got booted from the company WAY back in 2005. They made a movie about it.

His 4 percent stake is worth about $4 billion and he's going to save a boatload on taxes with the move.

Singapore, where Saverin lives, does not have a capital gains tax.

He will have to pay an exit tax on his holdings, but it will be at Facebook's valuation now, not after the IPO.

“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” Tom Goodman, a spokesman for Saverin, tells Bloomberg's Danielle Kucera, Sanat Vallikappen and Christine Harper.

Mostly, Saverin got in the way of Facebook's early development. At one point, he froze the company's bank account because he wasn't getting enough attention. Still, he was its first outside investor. And for that, insiders have described him as one of the most important people in company history.

Nicholas Carlson May 11, 2012, 12:58 PM

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