Chief Financial Officer, FacebookEbersman's track record is impressive. The 42-year-old made a name for himself at Genentech, starting as a business development analyst in 1994 and working his way up to executive vice president and CFO 12 years later. As CFO of Facebook, Ebersman is credited for having spent over a year spearheading the IPO, and now stands to face the most heat over the stock's disappointing initial performance. NEXT: Sheryl Sandberg Continue reading →
Steve Jobs' successor is making his mark and trying to keep the Apple magic going. FORTUNE -- In February of this year, a group of investors visited Apple as part of a "bus tour" led by a research analyst for Citibank. The session started with a 45-minute presentation by Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, and the 15 or so investors who attended the session were treated to Apple's unique brand of hospitality: They met in a threadbare conference room in Apple's Town Hall public conference center at the 4 Infinite Loop building in Cupertino, Calif., where the refreshments consisted of "three stale cookies and two Diet Cokes," in the words of one participant. All that, save the meager refreshments, is routine for big public ... Continue reading →
Speaking at Harvard Business School's Class Day, Facebook's COO barely addressed the controversy over the company's IPO. FORTUNE — Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's was the keynote speaker this afternoon at Harvard Business School's Class Day, which precedes commencement. Days after a tumultuous May 18 initial public offering, the social network has come under a barrage of questions and criticisms which could have made the event, well, awkward. So what happened? Not a lot. It was a hot and sticky 90 minutes under a blue, cloud-splattered sky on Baker Lawn on the HBS campus. The day's event was overshadowed by the heartbreaking death of second-year student Nathan Bihlmaier, 31, known as "Nate." Bihlmaier disappeared Sunday night in Portland, Maine, after a night celebrating with friends. His ... Continue reading →
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Hewlett-Packard announced Wednesday that it is slashing 27,000 jobs in a widely expected maneuver aimed at slimming down the struggling tech giant.The company expects the layoffs, which amount to 8% of its worldwide workforce, to save $3 billion to $3.5 billion by the end of 2014. The majority of that savings will be reinvested in research and development, HP said.The changes "will further streamline our operations, improve our processes, and remove complexity from our business," Meg Whitman, HP's CEO, said in a prepared statement. "While some of these actions are difficult because they involve the loss of jobs, they are necessary to improve execution and to fund the long term health of the company."HP (HPQ, Fortune 500) said it expects the ... Continue reading →
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Hewlett-Packard announced Wednesday that it is slashing 27,000 jobs in a widely expected maneuver aimed at slimming down the struggling tech giant.The company expects the layoffs, which amount to 8% of its worldwide workforce, to save $3 billion to $3.5 billion by the end of 2014. The majority of that savings will be reinvested in research and development, HP said.The changes "will further streamline our operations, improve our processes, and remove complexity from our business," Meg Whitman, HP's CEO, said in a prepared statement. "While some of these actions are difficult because they involve the loss of jobs, they are necessary to improve execution and to fund the long term health of the company."HP (HPQ, Fortune 500) said it expects the ... Continue reading →
No more daydreaming. The fine-tuned, touch-free, gesture-based motion control of "Minority Report" is real -- and it costs $70. The $70 Leap peripheral. Photo: Leap Motion FORTUNE -- When Tom Cruise swiped and pinched his way through a computer interface in 2002's Minority Report, audience-goers were wowed. Here was a compelling glimpse at the future of the computer interface, one no longer tethered by the dreary, decades-old mouse. Ever since, the public -- especially tech reporters -- has waited for real-world technology to catch up. And while Microsoft's (MSFT) wildly-popular Kinect controller has made great strides, a new $70 peripheral due out this winter called "The Leap," is poised to take things further. Co-founded by Michael Buckwald and David Holtz, Leap Motion's mini-candy bar-shaped device ... Continue reading →
The Seattle tech giant's AWS has midwifed some of the world's most popular startups. That could put it on a collision course with Amazon's mainline business. FORTUNE -- When Amazon Web Services emerged in 2006, it was questioned far and wide. What, exactly, was the online mega-retailer doing dabbling in web infrastructure? The move to provide services that have widely become known as cloud computing even puzzled some inside the company. "It was a big soul-searching decision," recalls Adam Selipsky, Amazon (AMZN) Web Services Vice President of Product Management and Developer Relations. But the business, based on the ideas in a 2004 research paper, made sense to many, including CEO Jeff Bezos. As Selipsky tells it, most developers were spending 70% of their time working ... Continue reading →
Interactive feature lets readers pick their dream C-Suites. By Stephanie N. Mehta, executive editor FORTUNE -- Executives like to compare business to sports. They use sports terminology to describe their strategies and they quote famous jocks (Like Wayne "skate to where the puck is going" Gretzky). And business journalists and investors love to debate corporate victories and foibles almost as much as sports writers and fans enjoy bickering about their favorite teams. Seriously. Check out "Mad Money" on CNBC. So it seemed natural for Fortune to find a way for readers to create their own imaginary rosters of real corporate executives -- a sort of fantasy sport for avid followers of the business world. The result, the Fortune Fantasy Sports Executive League, launches today. Participants ... Continue reading →
Facebook's wild, nascent summer of 2004 was loosely chronicled in the bolckbuster The Social Network. This is what it was really like. Editor's Note: When I was still in college and dreaming of getting paid to write, my friends started a magazine. I wanted to contribute. At the first ideas meeting I mentioned a social network that was quickly taking over all the Ivies and would soon, we all knew, arrive at our campus. The site's creators had dropped out of Harvard to work on their project full time. They were in Palo Alto, and I'd be home in California for the summer. Maybe I could make the six-hour drive to visit them? So I did. I drove up and visited and met Zuck and ... Continue reading →
