By Nivedita Balu

(Reuters) – Sheryl Sandberg’s exit from Meta Platforms Inc comes at a vital time for the Fb (NASDAQ:) father or mother because it pivots to “metaverse” within the face of slowing advert income, though Wall Avenue analysts say her departure won’t be as important.

As second-in-command to founder and Chief Govt Mark Zuckerberg, Sandberg reworked Fb from a buzzy startup right into a expertise behemoth and helped develop its advert income to over $100 billion from $272 million in her 14 years with the corporate.

She was additionally the face of the corporate in coping with regulators in Washington because the social-media community grew to become embroiled in a collection of controversies, together with an information scandal that concerned British agency Cambridge Analytica.

“Meta is a extra mature enterprise with set processes as Sandberg strikes on,” JMP Securities analyst Andrew Boone stated.

“Whereas we acknowledge Sandberg’s instrumental position in constructing Meta’s promoting enterprise, the corporate now has the infrastructure and processes in place to climate most departures, together with Sandberg’s.”

A Harvard graduate, Sandberg joined Fb from Google (NASDAQ:) in 2008, after having served as chief of workers for the U.S. Treasury Division below former President Invoice Clinton.

Javier Olivan, presently chief development officer, will take over as the corporate’s COO when Sandberg leaves.

“I am extra involved concerning the final end result of the metaverse and the influence of earnings over the subsequent handful of years than I’d be about who’s sitting within the position of COO,” stated Thomas Hayes, managing member at Nice Hill Capital LLC in New York.

MKM Companions analyst Rohit Kulkarni stated former British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, who was employed in 2018 to run the corporate’s world coverage group, may play a bigger position in coping with regulators.