(San Jose Mercury News) – Online daily-deals originator Groupon was prepared Friday morning to debut as a public company, offering stock that would value the Chicago company at a total seen only once before in history for a technology company’s initial public offering.
Groupon filed Thursday to sell 35 million shares — about 5.5 percent of the company, a smaller percentage than is normally offered — at $20 apiece. That would set the company’s market value at $12.7 billion, the second-highest total in tech history to Mountain View Internet giant Google (GOOG), which had a valuation of $23.1 billion when it went public in 2004.
