Xero, the New Zealand-based cloud accounting firm, is one of the global giants in small business SaaS. With the company’s stock price is down 54% since the start of this year. Xero had a tough earnings announcement this week. Xero reported a US$9.5 million net loss for the period ending Sept. 30, a bigger loss than the same period a year ago. The really big news is that Xero’s Australian CEO Steve Vamos has decided to “retire after nearly five years at the helm and return to leadership coaching.

Here is how Vamos framed it in a LinkedIn post.  “Looking ahead, I plan to return to my previous portfolio of business coaching and leadership development as an advisor, director, and investor. I also look forward to spending more time with my family, especially my six grandkids.”

The even bigger news is that a local search veteran will replace Vamos when he walks off (vamooses?) into the sunset next February. Sukhinder Singh Cassidy has been named as Vamos’s successor. Singh Cassidy is a familiar figure to many of us in local. In the early 2000s, she was the general manager of local and third-party partnerships at Google. And for a brief time during that period, she was an engaging fixture on stage at Kelsey Group events.

Packed Resume

Singh Cassidy has built quite the CV since her five-and-a-half-year run at Google (2003-2009). She has been a founder or co-founder of three companies — Evstnet, Polyvore, and theBoardlist. And she had a two-year run as President of StubHub.

In the announcement at least, Xero’s leadership seemed pretty stoked to have landed a Silicon Valley fixture like Singh Cassidy as its new CEO.

“As Xero continues to focus on achieving our global ambitions, weʼre delighted to appoint someone of Sukhinderʼs calibre as CEO to lead Xero through our next phase of growth,” said Xero Chair David Thodey. “Sukhinderʼs appointment follows a rigorous global recruitment process where we considered a number of exceptional candidates.”

Singh Cassidy struck a similar tone. It is a huge job, after all, to run a public company with a $9.5 billion market cap, not to mention a passionate customer (the annual Xero’s Xerocon events are legit rivals to Salesforce’s Dreamforce confab) base and a TAM made up essentially of all the world’s SMBs.

Thodey no doubt wants the market cap figure to become much larger under Singh Cassidy. And Sing Cassidy probably wouldn’t have taken the job if she didn’t think that was possible.

“Iʼm thrilled to be appointed as CEO, and appreciate the Xero Boardʼs confidence in me,” Singh Cassidy said. “What excites me about Xero is the people and culture of the company and the passion Xeroʼs partners and customers have for our product as well as the large Total Addressable Market opportunity.”