Facebook could have chosen to avoid the pop by doing a Dutch auction-style offering, as Google (GOOG) did in 2004.

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In a Dutch auction, by contrast, investors make actual offers to buy at a specific price, and a computer runs through the offers and determines the "clearing price" at which all shares can be sold.

FORBES: A Better, More Honest IPO

By this measure, all Dutch-auction IPOs should be failures.

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The credit rating agency referenced the December 3 offer by the Greek government to private investors to participate in a Dutch auction to exchange their sovereign bonds for short-term paper issued by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).

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At a recent lecture at the LSE in London, market editor of The Art Newspaper Melanie Gerlis illustrated this new art world order with a description of the recent auction of a painting by Dutch artist Lawrence Alma Tadema, a long-forgotten Victorian favourite.

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We will not offer a better way simply by aping Labour's approach in a Dutch auction of ever-higher spending promises.

BBC: David Davis statement in full