New CFO for Facebook

Washington - Facebook, the social network which has signed up more than 200 million members but has yet to make a profit, named a new chief financial officer on Monday.

David Ebersman, the former executive vice president and CFO of Genentech, the biotechnology firm recently acquired by Roche, will take over as CFO of Facebook from September, the Palo Alto, Calfornia-based Facebook said.

Ebersman will report to Facebook chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg and will oversee the company's finance, accounting, investor relations, and real estate functions, Facebook said in a statement.

Ebersman replaces Gideon Yu, who left Facebook in March. He will also join the executive management team, which directs all aspects of company strategy, planning and operations, it said.

"(Ebersman) was Genentech's CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organisation of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook," Zuckerberg said.

While its number of users has grown at an amazing clip, Facebook, unlike other web giants such as Amazon, eBay, Google and Yahoo!, has yet to prove how it is going to turn traffic into cash.

A Russian internet company, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), invested $200m in Facebook in May in a deal that values the social networking giant at $10bn.

DST's purchase of a 1.96% stake in preferred stock in Facebook was the largest cash-raising exercise by the social network in two years.

US computer software giant Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240m in 2007, a deal that at the time valued the company at $15bn.

- AFP