Uber, the world largest ride hailing technology company has been in the spotlight way too long. From lawsuits by Waymo to sexual harassment claims and founder, CEO, Travis Kalanick resigning, it hasn’t been a smooth ride for Uber so far. Heck, it even posted a loss of $2.8 billion for 2016. Uber has been trying to find a woman CEO to fill the shoes left by Mr Kalanick as well as make it a point to show that the tech firm wants to rid itself of its shadows mired by sexual harassment culture within the workplace.
There have been rumours that Meg Whitman, the chief executive at Hewlett Packet Enterprise was one of the favourites of the board to lead Uber but she recently turned down the offer by posting on Twitter. Meg Whitman was known to be the board’s most favoured candidate and believed that she would be able to lead the tech companies out of its current troubles.
Other candidates include Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Susan Wojcicki, chief of YouTube, Mary Barra from General Motors and Easyjet CEO, Carolyn McCall. All were reported to have been approached by the board but all of them seem to have turned the offer down. So far none of them has revealed their intentions for turning down the role.
On another note, there are also rumours floating that Travis Kalanick is making a comeback. He intends to find a way back to a seat at Uber via Softbank (who recently invested in Grab) to make another investment into Uber to dilute the shares whilst Kalanick buys and obtains more shares from employees thus giving him more power.
Now that all of the CEO candidates have turned the offer down, Uber has shortlisted 3 men who might likely take up the role of CEO at Uber. Nothing has been cast in stone yet and the search continues.
[Source: Washington Post, The New York Times]
