PrivCo, a research firm that tracks private companies, reported
yesterday that daily-deals company LivingSocial had taken an
"emergency" round of debt from current investors.  Now
LivingSocial CEO Tim O'Shaughnessy has strongly denied that
report in an email to employees obtained by Fortune's Dan
Primack.  LivingSocial is the No. 2 player in the daily-deals
market behind Groupon, whose stock has taken a hammering since
it went public in 2011. Amazon is a major investor in it.  In
particular, O'Shaughnessy said that quotes attributed by PrivCo
to a senior executive at the company are "fiction," and the
deal, in which the company sold a 7.5% stake for $110 million,
values the company at nearly $1.5 billion.  He confirmed that
this was a "down round"—an investment done at a lower price than
previous rounds. A previous round valued the company at $5.7
billion.  But he said that employees' options would still be
worth something in the event that the company sold for $1
billion or more.  Venture-capital investors t