Facebook’s seasoned CFO will leave the company, the social-networking site confirmed Wednesday.
Gideon Yu was also a vice president. He joined Facebook in August 2007 after working for YouTube and negotiating Google’s acquisition of the video-sharing site.
Facebook was mum on the reason for Yu’s departure, but said it will look for a new candidate who has experience in working in a public company. Facebook is a private company and has relied on raising investor funds to continue its expansion.
“Gideon has played an important role in helping us achieve our financial success, building a strong finance team and establishing the core financial operations of our company,” according to a Facebook statement.
Yu was senior vice president and treasurer for nearly four and a half years at Yahoo, where he oversaw that company’s acquisition of major online companies such as Alibaba/Taobao, Overture and Flicker.
Facebook also sought to play down the effects the global recession is having on its business.
“Despite the poor economic climate, we are pleased that our financial performance is strong and we are well positioned for the next stage of our growth,” the statement said.
Facebook has surpassed MySpace in unique page views to become the number one social-networking site, according to Compete.com, a Web analytics company. The company though may be facing competition from micro blogging site Twitter.