Darktrace PLC on Friday said it has promoted Chief Operating Officer Jill Popelka to chief executive officer, starting immediately, although her predecessor will stay on as a non-executive director.
The Cambridge, England-based cybersecurity provider said CEO Poppy Gustafsson will step down, also effective immediately, after around 11 years at Darktrace, which co-founded in 2013.
‘Darktrace has been a huge part of my life and my identity for over a decade and I am immensely proud of everything we have achieved in that time,’ Gustafsson commented. ‘Together we have revolutionised the marketplace for cybersecurity...This challenge has required tremendous personal and professional commitment from me.
‘With the acquisition of Darktrace by Thoma Bravo [LP] nearing its completion and with us having identified an excellent successor in Jill, now is the right time to hand over the reins so Jill can lead Darktrace through its transition into private ownership and beyond.’
Gustafsson added that she ‘[looks] forward to remaining engaged in this exciting next chapter...as a non-executive director after the transaction completes’.
Darktrace agreed in late April to the $5.32 billion takeover by Thoma Bravo, a Chicago-based private equity firm, meaning that the London Stock Exchange will lose one of its few remaining larger-scale technology companies.
Darktrace was subsequently promoted from the FTSE 250 to the FTSE 100 in early June, its shares having risen 60% in the year to May 28.
The stock was trading up 0.1% at 584.00 pence on Friday morning in London. The Thoma Bravo acquisition is at $7.75, or 620p, per share.
Incoming CEO Popelka joined Darktrace in January as a non-executive director and moved to COO on June 1.
She was previously head of AR enterprise services at Santa Monica, California-based Snapchat-owner Snap Inc from June 2022 to May 2024. Prior to that she spent five months as COO at SAP SuccessFactors from October 2019 to February 2022, followed by two years and four months as the San Francisco-based HR cloud solution provider’s president. SAP SuccessFactors is part of Germany’s SAP SE.
‘We are fully supportive of Poppy and the board’s succession plan,’ said Thoma Bravo Partner Andrew Almeida. ‘Jill is the perfect leader to build on Poppy’s tremendous legacy at Darktrace as it embarks on this next phase of its life given her immense experience of scaling and maturing fast-growing businesses...We look forward to working with Jill and the wider team to help elevate Darktrace’s place as the essential cybersecurity platform for the changing threat landscape.’
Darktrace also said the Thoma Bravo takeover ‘continues to progress as anticipated’. It is currently waiting on one remaining foreign regulatory approval, and expects to receive this by September 28.
It said it will seek the UK court’s sanction of the deal ‘as soon as’ the final approval comes through, and expects to close the transaction ‘shortly afterwards’.
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