This morning First Read brings you the latest on private equity manager bonuses, Spark Capital’s oversubscribed fund close and whether Facebook could possibly acquire LinkedIn?

This morning in First Read find out about Samsung’s funding boost; RRJ’s mega venture capital target and CVC’s second deal in South East Asia in less than a month.

This morning find out what private equity’s comeback plan is, if it indeed needs one, how much Boston biotech has raised in offerings and what the lowdown is on 3i’s restructuring plans.

The Payvment team is joining a new company and the Payvment platform will be shut down on February 28th. As part of the transition, customers will have one month to transfer business to Ecwid. Ecwid is a social commerce business with over 200,000 sellers in 174 countries and a Facebook application very similar to Payvment.

This morning, find out the latest on Silver Lake and Dell, whether biopharma is being innovative enough and what the deal is with Harper’s venture capital fund.

Today First Read brings you the latest links on alternative funding options for start-ups; how to hire great engineers; what’s going on with the cloud and what Facebook should be working on next.

This morning first Read highlights links to those five start-ups you should follow; whether PE ownership is good for corporate health; the inflation of the ed tech bubble and mulls the question on everyone’s lips – what if the Royal Baby is a girl?

Facebook Inc board member Marc Andreessen sold roughly $54 million worth of shares in the social networking company on Monday to cover taxes he owes on his holdings, Reuters reported. Andreessen’s sales are among the latest transactions by Facebook insiders as trading restrictions have expired following the company’s May initial public offering.

Fenwick & West’s quarterly study of private company valuation trends in Silicon Valley found up rounds exceeded down rounds by 61% to 17% in the third quarter. This wasn’t quite as ebullient as the second quarter, when 74% of deals had higher valuations.

Today, the third tranche of restrictions locking up Facebook shares expires, and the quantity of shares available to trade – roughly 800 million, or 36 percent of the stock outstanding — is stunning.
The big questions, of course, are how many shareholders – and, importantly, which of them — will use the occasion to turn that stock into cold, hard cash.