Privacy Crisis Costs Facebook Ranking in S&P 500 Market Cap Club

(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc.’s prestige keeps slipping.

Bruised by a privacy crisis, the social media giant lost its position among the top five S&P 500 companies by market value to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., as noted in Bespoke Investment Group LLC research. Facebook fell out of the club on March 19 and the gap widened to about $42 billion on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg data.

Revelations that a data analytics firm obtained data from 50 million Facebook users sparked a selloff that has wiped out about $95 billion in market value in the past two weeks. Reports that Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg plans to testify before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee did little to stem the decline. Facebook shares fell 4.9 percent on Tuesday amid a broad selloff in technology stocks.

--With assistance from Jeremy Herron

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeran Wittenstein in San Francisco at jwittenstei1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Arie Shapira at ashapira3@bloomberg.net, Jeremy Herron

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