Facebook Hires Yu as Finance Chief

Facebook Inc. hired Gideon Yu as chief financial
officer, adding YouTube Inc.’s former finance chief to further bolster
the social-networking company’s executive ranks.

Mr. Yu, 36 years old, succeeds Mike Sheridan. Mr.
Sheridan is leaving the company after joining in September. Facebook
said he wasn’t available for comment.

Mr. Yu joins from Google
Inc., where he stayed after the company bought YouTube, a video-sharing
site, last year. He abandoned prior plans to leave Google to become a
partner at Silicon Valley venture firm Sequoia Capital.

“My heart is first and foremost with venture-stage
companies and consumer Internet companies,” Mr. Yu said. He said he
will leave Google this quarter.

“I consider it kind of a coup that we were able to
recruit him here,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said. “He’s
just excellent.”

Facebook’s recent record for attracting prominent
executives reflects both its current status as perhaps Silicon Valley’s
most-watched startup and speculation that the firm’s employees stand to
gain financially through any eventual deal or initial public offering.

Mr. Yu’s appointment follows the hiring this month of
Chamath Palihapitiya, an investor for the Mayfield Fund LP
venture-capital firm, as vice president of product marketing and
operations. Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, co-founders of open-source Web
browser Mozilla Firefox, are joining Facebook as part of its
acquisition of their Parakey startup.

The executive shuffle comes as the Palo Alto, Calif.,
company hones its strategy for generating more revenue from the high
volume of user traffic on its site. Having rejected several acquisition
approaches, Facebook is expected to start preparing for an IPO within
the next two years, if it doesn’t succumb to a sweeter deal proposal.

“We’re not looking to sell the company, and we’re
really not looking to IPO any time soon,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “Our
board and we believe it’s probably best to push some of these things
off as long as possible.”

The move caps a whirlwind year for Mr. Yu, who joined YouTube in September from Yahoo
Inc., where he had been the treasurer. After playing a role in
negotiating helping both to negotiate YouTube’s more than $1.7 billion
acquisition by Google and to integrate the online video company into
its buyer, he accepted an offer to join Sequoia. “I’m hoping this is my
last job for a long time,” Mr. Yu said.

A Sequoia spokesman couldn’t be reached for comment. A YouTube spokeswoman wasn’t able to comment.

Write to Kevin J. Delaney at kevin.delaney@wsj.com

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