Investors force Travis Kalanick to resign as CEO of Uber
After an intense discussion with investors for hours Travis Kalanick gave into their demands for him to resign as the CEO of Uber.
Key highlights:
- CEO Travis Kalanick now has resigned from Uber
- Investor pressure the reason for him to resign
- Says that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight
Just a week after announcing that he will take a break from Uber, CEO Travis Kalanick now has resigned from the company he founded.
Kalanick resigned from the CEO's post after a shareholder revolt made it impossible for him to stay on, said a New York Times report adding, on Tuesday five of Uber's major investors demanded that the CEO resign immediately.
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In a letter titled 'Moving Uber Forward', an investor wrote to Kalanick that he must immediately leave and that the company needed a change in leadership.
Kalanick consulted some of investors and agreed to step down. He will, however, remain on Uber's board of directors.
This comes after an Uber employee complained of the level of sexual harassment at the company a year earlier. This resulted in several other complaints from employees of the same and resulted in an internal investigation into the matter.
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The investigation suggested that Kalanick take a break from the company and also the appointment of a COO to take some of the key responsibilities from him. Following which he announced he would take a break from Uber.
Besides sexual harassment issues, the company has been plagued by other issues such as the rape case in Delhi and top executive Eric Alexander conducting his own investigation and trying to prove that it was a ploy by competitor Ola.
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Uber has also been dealing with an intellectual property lawsuit from Waymo, the self-driving business of Google's parent company Alphabet Inc and a federal inquiry into Uber using a software tool to sidestep some law enforcement.
Kalanick in a statement said, “I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight.”
11:44 AM IST