By Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Facebook could file regulatory papers as early as Wednesday for its highly anticipated initial public offering of stock, according to a newspaper report.

Facebook's expected launch as a publicly traded company is the most hotly anticipated tech IPO in more than a decade. It would vault it into the top ranks of the largest public companies in the world, on par with the likes of McDonald's Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Visa Inc. and Bank of America Corp.

The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, said Friday that the social-networking company could raise as much as $10 billion in an offering that would value the company at $75 billion to $100 billion.

Either measure would dwarf the $1.67 billion raised in Google's 2004 IPO. That offering gave Google a market value of $23 billion. Google is now worth $184 billion.

CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, 27, is already considered a billionaire because of shares traded on a closed market.
Facebook spokesman Larry Wu said the company will not comment on IPO-related speculation.

After filing its initial paperwork, a public offering usually takes three to four months.