What happened
Considering that Friday was a bad day for the stock market overall, particularly for tech titles, it probably wasn't the ideal time for a major executive transition. That was the case with DocuSign (DOCU 0.10%), which took a nearly 3% hit to its stock price that day after announcing a new leader after market hours Thursday. By contrast, the S&P 500 index shed only 1.7% of its value.
So what
DocuSign announced that Allan Thygesen is to become its new CEO, effective Monday, Oct. 10. He will also serve on the company's board of directors. He replaces Maggie Wilderotter, who was appointed interim CEO in mid-June following the departure of Dan Springer.
In the press release trumpeting the appointment, DocuSign quoted Wilderotter as saying that Thygesen "is a customer-focused innovator with deep experience in e-commerce, the digitalization of business, and leading high-growth scale organizations."
His work history certainly seems to back up these assertions. He is a longtime manager at core Alphabet unit Google, most recently serving as its president, Americas and global partners. Before that he was president of Google marketing solutions. All told, his term at Google lasted nearly 12 years.
Thygesen is no stranger to the boardroom, both within the tech industry and outside it. He has served as a director at business software-as-a-service (SaaS) purveyor RingCentral and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, among other entities.
Now what
Investors likely weren't concerned about the incoming leader's experience and qualifications. A CEO change is always a reminder that a business, no matter how otherwise successful, is in flux and faces a period of at least some uncertainty. Yet DocuSign seems like it'll be in good hands, so perhaps the stock's Friday sell-off was a bit of an overreaction.
