Facebook names a CFO, at last

Facebook has named former Genentech executive David Ebersman to the office of chief financial officer. He replaces Gideon Yu, whose departure was announced at the end of March.

"We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook. He was Genentech's CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook."

David Ebersman earned a bachelor's degree from Brown University in 1991, according a university Web page.

(Credit: Brown University)

Ebersman served as chief financial officer at the San Francisco-area biotechnology company Genentech from 2006 through April 2009 after moving up the ranks in the company for about a decade. The company was sold to Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Hoffmann-LaRoche in March, shortly before Ebersman stepped down.

He will officially start at Facebook in September.

Gideon Yu's departure from Facebook came amid rumors that he had failed to secure enough venture capital to keep the advertising-based company pushing forward toward profitability, something that Facebook repeatedly denied. The company said its search for a new CFO would focus primarily on "someone with public company experience." Ebersman wasn't at Genentech when it went public in 1980, but certainly did have experience running the financial operations of a public company--as well as its sale to a bigger corporation.

Two months after Yu departed Facebook, the social-networking company announced that it had received an additional infusion of venture capital, to the tune of $200 million, from Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies.

This post was updated at 12:01 p.m. PDT.