LinkedIn share price almost doubles in NYSE debut

Shares of LinkedIn Corp surged nearly 90 percent in their public trading debut on Thursday, a jump reminiscent of the heyday of investors' love affair with Internet stocks in the late 1990s.

The shares rose to $85.18 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, 89.3 percent above their $45 initial public offering price. That pushes the market value of the company to about $8 billion.

LinkedIn is the first prominent U.S. social networking company to publicly test just how hungry investors are for Web 2.0 inhabitants as people turn to other hot names in the space: Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga.

LinkedIn, which runs a professional social network, raised $352.8 million on Wednesday by selling 8 percent of the company, or 7.84 million shares, for $45 each.

The company increased its anticipated price range by $10 on Tuesday to $42 to $45 per share.

Underwriters on the IPO were led by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan.

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In abrupt turnaround, Olympus admits it hid losses

Japan's Olympus admitted on Tuesday it hid losses on securities investments dating back two decades, bowing to weeks of pressure to explain a series of baffling transactions that have put the future of the firm in doubt. The revelations by the 92-year-old company appear to vindicate ex-CEO Michael Woodford, who has staged a campaign since being sacked on October 14 to force the firm to come clean on nearly $1.5 billion in questionable payments. Olympus President Shuichi Takayama blamed Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who quit as president and chairman on October 26, Vice-President Hisashi Mori and internal auditor Hideo Yamada for the cover-up, saying he would consider criminal complaints against them. The admission after weeks of denials shocked investors, sending shares in the endoscope and camera maker skidding almost 30 percent and prompting the biggest non-Japanese shareholder to demand the replacement of the entire board. "Ignorance is no defense," said Jo...

Last year's iPhones are destroying Samsung's new Galaxy S9 flagship smartphone - Bench Mark Results

Samsung announced the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, the latest entries in its flagship line of smartphones, at Barcelona's Mobile World Congress — but benchmark results are awkwardly showing the devices scoring significantly lower than many of their competitors. Benchmarks are synthetic tests that give numeric, quantifiable results. They are generally applications programmed to make the devices' systems-on-a-chip (SoC) run a series of tasks and determine how long it takes them to complete. AnandTech is a site that specialises in running rigorous tests like these, and its early findings on Samsung's latest devices are curious to say the least— particularly compared to the latest iPhones, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 — which will power most of the Android flagships this year — and even Samsung's own Galaxy S8 from last year. In a number of tests — such as web browsing, writing, data manipulation, and photo editing — the Galaxy S9's Exynos 9810 consistently deliv...

Microsoft nears $8.5 billion Skype buy in web shift

Microsoft is close to buying internet telephony network Skype in an $8.5 billion deal, a source familiar with the situation said, as it seeks to regain ground on growing rivals such as Google. Buying the loss-making but popular Skype would underline Microsoft's need to gain new customers and platforms for its software as smartphones and tablets explode in popularity. Skype, which allows people to make calls at no charge, would also give Microsoft a foothold in potentially the lucrative video-conferencing market as global businesses seeking to reduce expenditure shift to lower-cost ways of communicating. Microsoft has already put more energy and resources into mobile and internet technologies as the use of PCs, which underpin its Windows and Office franchise, is under threat. This change was starkly illustrated last year when Apple's portfolio of coveted consumer goods propelled it past Microsoft to become the world's most valuable technology company. The maker of iPhones an...

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