Groupon

KEVIN McELROY won't speak with me on the phone. So I've been unable to ask this very important businessman a question: Does he give a damn about the Philadelphia wedding disaster he's unleashed on Brett Condon and Rob Zahorchak? Condon, 28, and Zahorchak, 31, were supposed to marry on Saturday, Sept. 24, aboard the Philadelphia Belle - the restaurant/catering paddleboat, docked at Penn's Landing, that opened with dazzle in December. The couple paid their entire $18,998 Belle bill on June 29, two months before it was due. That's because Brett, a new attorney at the Center City law firm Weber Gallagher, and Rob, a manager with GameStop, "scrimped and saved, and the cash was in the bank.

SAN FRANCISCO - Rapidly growing online-coupon-seller Groupon Inc. is dangling its most tantalizing deal yet - an initial public offering of stock. The prospect is likely to intensify a debate about whether an investment bubble is forming around promising but still unproven Internet companies. Groupon took the first step toward selling its stock on Wall Street by filing its IPO papers Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The much-anticipated filing comes just two weeks after LinkedIn Corp., a popular Internet service for professional networking, saw its shares double in their first day of trading.

Groupon is adding 150 employees a month at its U.S. headquarters and trains them in a church because the conference rooms at its headquarters aren't big enough. Ideeli has crammed so much electronic equipment into its New York office that the power goes out every day. And at LivingSocial, well, the living is a little too social. Its third office in Washington, open just two months, ran out of room so fast that employees have to work at narrow desks in the hallway. These deal-a-day websites blast e-mail offers for deep discounts, sometimes good for only a few hours - and they're becoming so popular that their offices are starting to look as crowded as their subscribers' inboxes.

NEW YORK - LinkedIn's stock nearly doubled in its market debut because of huge investor demand for the first major U.S. social networking company to go public. The stock traded at $87.11, up 94 percent, Thursday morning after debuting at $83 and briefly reaching $92.99. Trading in the stock didn't begin until almost 10 this morning, not unusual in a hotly anticipated IPO. Renaissance Capital, an IPO research and investment firm, said LinkedIn's 84 percent increase at the open was the biggest for a U.S. IPO since the 2009 debut of OpenTable Inc., a restaurant reservations website.

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. cofounder Larry Page is known for his vision, passion, and intelligence. Yet there is concern that his other known traits - aloofness, a rebellious streak, and an affinity for pursuing wacky ideas - might lead the company astray. Page takes over as chief executive officer Monday as fast-rising rivals and tougher regulators threaten Google's growth. Investors used to Google's consistency in exceeding financial targets worry that new leadership will bring more emphasis on long-term projects that take years to pay off. And many people are not sure he has enough management skills to steer the Internet's most powerful company.

If you bought Monday's Groupon "Deal of the Day" offering of $30 worth of food for $15 at Franco's Trattoria on Ridge Avenue in East Falls, be advised that the restaurant closed for good over the weekend. Before the deal was pulled from Groupon's website Monday afternoon, 105 offers had been sold. A Groupon rep said purchases would be refunded. Building owner Mark Sherman said he was looking for a new operator to run the restaurant, which is off Kelly Drive beneath the twin bridges.

Thanks to virtual cows, online coupons and other digital culture storms, two more Wharton School of Business alums have joined the ranks of the world's billionaires, according to Forbes magazine's annual list. The two are also in cahoots - even though their academic stints in West Philadelphia didn't overlap. Mark Pincus, Class of '88, is the mastermind behind the so-called "Google of games," a San Francisco firm called Zynga now worth $5 billion to $7 billion, says Forbes. Not too shabby for being four years old. A big chunk of the throttle-money - $180 million - came from Russia's Yuri Milner, who studied at Wharton in the early 1990s, and has since become a major money man in the digital world.