- Associated Press - Wednesday, February 1, 2012

NEW YORK (AP) - FB? That’s the best they could do?


And it used about as much creativity as liking someone else’s status.

This was Facebook’s place on the ticker, the electronic river of American commerce. This was a chance to make a statement, assert an identity _ a choice as fundamental as picking blue for the ribbon at the top of the screen.

But FB?



A clever ticker can be like a vanity license plate, helping investors remember a company. Snagging a coveted one-letter ticker _ think “C” for Citigroup, formerly for Chrysler _ is a status symbol in certain realms.



A few years ago, regulators decided that ticker-awarding wasn’t always fair, and created rules to keep stock exchanges from playing favorites. Regulators also blocked companies from piling up requests for ticker symbols just to keep rivals from taking them.

The new rules reworked the number of letters allowed in a ticker. The NYSE had offered only one-, two- and three-letter symbols, Nasdaq fours and fives. The new regulations make it wide open _ one to five letters should eventually be allowed on any exchange.

The idea was to keep the length of the ticker symbol from dictating which exchange a company filed with. In its regulatory filing Wednesday evening, Facebook said it planned to trade on either the Nasdaq or the NYSE.

Here are our suggestions for what could have been:


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