Meta's chief business officer Marne Levine to depart

Facebook-parent Meta Platforms said in a blog post on Monday that its chief business officer Marne Levine, who was appointed in 2021, would be leaving the company effective February 21, 2023.
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Nicola Mendelsohn and Justin Osofsky will take on taking on expanded roles as senior sales and partnership leaders, and would report to COO Javier Olivan.

“From running global policy, to growing our Instagram business as the first COO, to leading our ads and business partnerships teams, Marne has been an incredible leader at Meta over the last 13 years. I’m grateful for our partnership, her commitment to Meta, and the energy she brought to the company every day,” Olivan said in the post.


This comes days after the Financial Times reported that Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc had delayed finalising the budgets of multiple teams as it prepares a fresh round of job cuts.

In recent weeks there had been a lack of clarity surrounding budgets and future head count, the FT reported, citing two Meta employees familiar with the situation.

Profits down

Meta posted lower fourth quarter profit and revenue, with quarterly profit declining 55% as founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his management theme for 2023 would be the “year of efficiency” after 18 years of growth, while addressing analysts on a post-earnings call.

The company's net income was $4.65 billion, or $1.76 per share, in the final three months of 2022. That's down 55% from $10.29 billion, or $3.67 per share, a year earlier.

This marks the third consecutive quarter of revenue decline for the tech giant, which laid off 11,000 workers, or about 13% of its workforce, in November.

Meta reported that it had scooped up $32.17 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, down from $33.67 billion a year ago.

"Our community continues to grow and I'm pleased with the strong engagement across our apps. Facebook just reached the milestone of 2 billion daily actives," said Zuckerberg said in a statement.

'Year of efficiency'

Zuckerberg, during the company’s earnings call, said 2023 will be the ‘year of efficiency’. He described the focus on efficiency as part of the natural evolution of the company, calling it a "phase change" for an organisation that once lived by the motto "move fast and break things."

"I want to discuss my management theme for 2023, which is the Year of Efficiency. We closed last year with some difficult layoffs and restructuring some teams. And when we did this, I said clearly that this was the beginning of our focus on efficiency and not the end," he said during the company's earnings call after the fourth quarter results.

During the earnings call, the CEO said Meta was working on flattening the organisation structure and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster as well as deploying AI tools to help its engineers be more productive.