Keith Krach has helped oversee efforts to import medical supplies, repatriate American citizens and assess the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the nation’s economy.
The U.S. State Department’s undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment is also richer, thanks to his previous career in business.
Krach’s fortune has surged more than $200 million this year from his stake in DocuSign Inc. -- the e-signature firm he led before joining the Trump administration last year -- as the pandemic drives more business online. Shares of the San Francisco-based company surged 36% this year through Thursday, boosting Krach’s net worth to $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Krach, 63, is among the those who have benefited financially from a pandemic that ground the global economy to a halt and destroyed more than 20 million American jobs in the past month. Another is Zoom Video Communications Inc. founder Eric Yuan, whose net worth has more than doubled this year to $7.8 billion as demand for its teleconferencing service exploded.
U.S. banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. signaled this week that loan losses fueled by the unprecedented job cuts could rival those incurred after the 2008 financial crisis, meaning Krach now faces the challenge of helping to reboot the U.S. economy even as his own wealth grows.
He and representatives of the State Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“It’s really amazing for me to see the State Department interagency work like a machine on this and to protect the U.S. citizens,” Krach said during a Feb. 4 press briefing, referring to his team’s work on the coronavirus response.
This week, Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives raised his price target on the stock to $115, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. disclosed that it added DocuSign to its Growth Opportunities Fund. The shares closed Thursday at $100.68.
Krach, an Ohio native who received an engineering degree from Purdue University and an MBA from Harvard, joined the State Department in June after about a decade as chairman of DocuSign, where he was chief executive officer until 2017. He helped lead the company’s initial public offering the following year. His 4.4% stake in the firm comprises the bulk of his wealth.
--With assistance from Jack Witzig, Pei Yi Mak and Nick Wadhams.