Facebook chief financial officer stepping down

Facebook chief financial officer stepping down

PanARMENIAN.Net - Facebook's chief financial officer David Ebersman is stepping down from the company two years after he orchestrated one of the largest, and tumultuous, IPOs in history, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Ebersman is leaving June 1 and being replaced by David Wehner, who joined Facebook in 2012 from Zynga to become the company’s vice president of corporate finance and business planning.

Ebersman joined Facebook in 2009, leading the company into its initial public offering in May 2012. The former Genentech finance chief says he is returning back to the healthcare industry, without disclosing where.

He has been unloading large chunks of his shares in recent months as part of a pre-arranged trading plan — in November, he unloaded almost 9% of his stake worth $42.6 million, setting a record for CFO stock sales. A month later, he sold $26.2 million more in stock.

Ebersman is credited with driving the largest U.S. Internet offering of all time. But the much-hyped IPO was also highly controversial as the stock barely budged upward on IPO day and then plummeted in the following days and weeks, the Journal says. Investors blamed Ebersman and bankers led by Morgan Stanley for raising the offer price and boosting the number of shares offered in the IPO by 25%. But others called the IPO a success, as Facebook was able to raise about $10 billion and give selling investors the highest price possible.

On Wednesday, April 23, Facebook also reported strong earnings, beating analysts’ expectations with a 72% increase in revenue.

“Facebook’s business is strong and growing, and this quarter was a great start to 2014,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement Wednesday. “We’ve made some long term bets on the future while staying focused on executing and improving our core products and business. We’re in great position to continue making progress towards our mission.”

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