Zynga IPO due by next week - Report

Zynga, the creator of the wildly popular casual games FarmVille, CityVille, and Mafia Wars, is about to go public, reports the Wall Street Journal. Citing "sources close to the situation," the newspaper's All Things D column says preparations for the initial public offering are proceeding rapidly, with the IPO due no later than the end of next week.

According to the Journal, the privately held Zynga was last valued at $10 billion--more than megapublisher Electronic Arts' market capitalization. However, the financial daily thinks that the company will price itself higher when its stock goes on sale, encouraged by the market's appetite for hot tech stocks. Earlier this month, employment-networking site LinkedIn went public and saw its stock price double on its first day of trading for a market cap of $9 billion.

Zynga's IPO will come around a month after the company hired away EA's COO John Pleasants. The company is also negotiating with the city of San Francisco for an exemption to a payroll tax that affects payments gleaned from IPOs.