It's Facebook's big day.

It's Facebook's big day.

After all the hype, Facebook's first day as a public company ended where it began. Its stock closed at $38.23, up 23 cents, after pricing Thursday night at $38 per share.

After all the hype, Facebook's first day as a public company ended where it began. Its stock closed at $38.23, up 23 cents, after pricing Thursday night at $38 per share.

After all the hype, Facebook's first day as a public company ended where it began. Its stock closed at $38.23, up 23 cents, after pricing Thursday night at $38 per share.

After all the hype, Facebook's first day as a public company ended where it began. Its stock closed at $38.23, up 23 cents, after pricing Thursday night at $38 per share.

After all the hype, Facebook's first day as a public company ended where it began. Its stock closed at $38.23, up 23 cents, after pricing Thursday night at $38 per share.

It's Facebook's big day.

Chaos in Greek politics and Spanish banking combined this week to underscore just how fragile Europe's economy remains after an eviscerating austerity regime that has spawned unemployment, desperation and misery. And there is no respite in sight, as Germany's finance minister predicted Friday that the crisis could last up to another two years.

(Reuters) - General Motors Co will not advertise in next year's Super Bowl because it is too expensive, the top marketing executive for the U.S. automaker said three days after the company said it was dropping paid ads on Facebook Inc. The 2013 Super Bowl will be broadcast by CBS Corp, which is selling 30-second ads for as much as $4 million. Spots on NBC's broadcast of this year's National Football League championship game, the most heavily watched annual event on U.S. television, cost about $3.5 million per 30-second spot. NBC is majority-owned by Comcast Corp. ...

BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) - European officials are working on contingency plans in case Greece bombs out of the euro zone, the EU's trade commissioner said on Friday, as European share prices tumbled and Germany warned of continuing financial turmoil. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, one of Greece's harsher critics, said market unrest fuelled by the euro zone debt crisis could last another year or two. "Regarding the crisis of confidence in the euro ... in 12 to 24 months we will see a calming of the financial markets," he said. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Friday after a sloppy debut by Facebook Inc spoiled hopes that a spectacular open for the most-anticipated stock sale in years would brighten the mood in what has been a gloomy month for markets. Based on the latest available data, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 73.11 points, or 0.59 percent, at 12,369.38. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 9.64 points, or 0.74 percent, at 1,295.22. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 34.90 points, or 1.24 percent, at 2,778.79. (Wall Street desk; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

(Reuters) - Chesapeake Energy Corp reduced the compensation for its outside directors by 20 percent and eliminated their use of its aircraft for personal travel, the company said on Friday. The natural gas producer said its outside directors will receive total annual compensation of $350,000, comprised of a $100,000 cash component and a $250,000 equity component. (Reporting By Matt Daily)

By the conventional understanding of the network effect, which states a service is as valuable as the number of people using it, Facebook can only benefit, right? The social network has 845 million users logging on to the site multiple times a day and only has plans to get bigger as it just went public this morning and needs to keep growing to prove its value. But, in Facebook's case, as the site grows and its network gets bigger, it will also get more annoying and less useful. ...

It's going to take more than Facebook's initial public offering to push the stock market higher.

(Reuters) - The Japanese government and private sector bank officials are considering asking the Bank of Japan (BOJ) for help in settling Iranian oil transactions, the Nikkei reported. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, which handles most of Japan's payments for oil imports from Iran, on Thursday said it had frozen transactions with Iranian banks after being ordered to do so by the New York District Court earlier this month. The move stems from a U.S. court decision in 2007 that ordered Iran to pay more than $2.6 billion to survivors and victims' family members of the 1983 bombing of a U.S. ...

(Reuters) - The trustee for MF Global Holdings Inc's brokerage unit said he has received $168 million in cash from JPMorgan Chase & Co , which had been the commodities and futures brokerage firm's main bank prior to its October bankruptcy. James Giddens, the trustee for the MF Global Inc unit, said the money represents proceeds of excess collateral that the largest U.S. bank held when the unit began to liquidate. He said the payment will help his efforts to return money to former MF Global customers, and that he remains in talks with JPMorgan on other claims. An estimated $1. ...

(Reuters) - Solar stocks slumped to fresh lows on Friday as investors continued to punish Chinese solar companies a day after the United States said it would impose new duties on imports from the world's leading solar manufacturer. Suntech Power Holdings was down 4.2 percent, Trina Solar Ltd slid 5 percent and Yingli Green Energy dropped 7.5 percent, extending declines made on Thursday when the U.S. Commerce Department ruled China-based solar companies had violated trade rules and 'dumped' their products in the U.S. at below-market prices. ...

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilian iron ore miner Vale is confident it will win a dispute over taxes the government claims the company owes on earnings abroad, CEO Murilo Ferreira said on Friday. The government has ordered Vale to pay 30.5 billion reais ($15.19 billion) in tax on profits from its foreign subsidiaries. The company said it already paid the taxes to foreign governments and that Brazil's claim is a form of illegal double taxation. Vale, along with other companies and industry associations, is disputing the back taxes in Brazil's highest court. ...

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish banks' bad loans rose in March to their highest in 18 years, underscoring the problems facing the government as it drafts in independent auditors in an attempt to reassure investors it can clean up the sector. The Bank of Spain said bad loans rose to 8.37 percent of banks' outstanding loans, the highest since August 1994 and up from 8.3 percent in February, which was also revised higher. The data was released before Spain names auditors on Monday to assess how bad the losses are likely to get, and how much cash banks will need to rebuild their balance sheets. ...

Need another confirmation that the world of programming is as nerdy as you suspected? Well, today we learn tech employers want recruits to think that they'll be hired as ninjas or Jedis, like we're all living in Kill Bill or Star Wars or something. Just take a look at the 2,505 percent overall increase in the number of jobs described with the word "ninja" since May 2006, according to job site Indeed.com. Similar rises in the number of job listings with "rock star"/"rockster" (810 percent) or with "Jedi" (67 percent) happened since then too.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - For a company that is dramatically upending business strategies and social relationships around the world, Facebook Inc made a surprisingly modest debut on the Nasdaq on Friday as a sky-high valuation and trading glitches capped the stock's rise. In late trading, Facebook shares were only a few cents above the company's initial public offering price of $38, after opening 11 percent higher, rapidly heading south to touch their initial price and then rebounding by several dollars. ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - For a company that is dramatically upending business strategies and social relationships around the world, Facebook Inc made a surprisingly modest debut on the Nasdaq on Friday as a sky-high valuation and trading glitches capped the stock's rise. In late trading, Facebook shares were only a few cents above the company's initial public offering price of $38, after opening 11 percent higher, rapidly heading south to touch their initial price and then rebounding by several dollars. ...

Facebook is trading up 8 percent Friday, as investors seek to put a dollar value on the company that turned online social networking into a global cultural phenomenon.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook Inc's modest debut on Friday may have averted a potential headache for the company and regulators, and kept at bay a debate over the role of "odd lots" in the marketplace. Shares of Facebook traded as high as $45.00, near the price of $50 that would keep many retail investors from placing a typical "round lot" order of 100 shares, because the total cost will be $5,000 - considered a threshold for many investors. An order for less than 100 shares is called an odd lot. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stocks erased the year's gains on Friday as investors fled risky investments for safe-haven assets on concerns about the euro zone's deepening debt woes, while U.S. stocks lost ground after the market debut of social network Facebook failed to lift optimism. Brent crude briefly slipped below $107 per barrel to its lowest in 2012 as the euro zone crisis raised fears of a global slowdown that could dent oil demand, while German borrowing costs hit record lows. World stocks, as measured by the MSCI index , dropped 1. ...

(Reuters) - Kraft Foods said on Friday it lowered prices on many of its U.S. coffees, including its flagship brand Maxwell House, citing lower green coffee costs since prices peaked last year, making it the second major U.S. roaster to lower its coffee prices this week. The move comes three days after J.M. Smucker Co. cut the cost of well-known brands Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts by an average of 6 percent. It is the second cut to coffee prices since August 2011 for both companies. ...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is eyeing a stake in Telekom Austria and is believed to have held initial talks with its two biggest investor groups, Austrian magazine Format reported, without citing sources. It said Slim had been in touch with Ronny Pecik - who with partner Naguib Sawiris has built a 20 percent stake in Telekom Austria - and Austrian state holding company OeIAG, Telekom Austria's biggest shareholder with a 28.4 percent stake. ...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is eyeing a stake in Telekom Austria and is believed to have held initial talks with its two biggest investor groups, Austrian magazine Format reported, without citing sources. It said Slim had been in touch with Ronny Pecik - who with partner Naguib Sawiris has built a 20 percent stake in Telekom Austria - and Austrian state holding company OeIAG, Telekom Austria's biggest shareholder with a 28.4 percent stake. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - A new banking crunch in the euro zone risks another sharp retreat by western parent banks from vulnerable economies in central and eastern Europe, a process that must be slowed to preserve growth, officials from the region said on Friday. Countries backing Europe's development bank for the former communist bloc elected a new president - for the first time from non-euro member Britain - just as fears grow that a Greek exit from the currency could hit emerging Europe's lenders. ...

Boston (Reuters) - Welcome to the club, Jamie Dimon. Embarrassed by a surprise $2 billion trading loss last week, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co faced heightened criticism at the bank's annual meeting on Tuesday. That included 40 percent backing from shareholders for a resolution to strip Dimon of his chairmanship title, up from 34 percent in 2010. With the spring U.S. ...

Facebook updated its status to "public company" on Friday.