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The backbiting has\u00a0taken a toll. After it was reported that she was a candidate for the chief executive job, Ms. Whitman\u00a0said last Thursday\u00a0that \u201cUber\u2019s C.E.O. will not be Meg Whitman.\u201d She made her announcement in a series of messages on Twitter just as the Uber board was holding a quarterly meeting, at which they had planned to call a vote on whether to appoint her to the job.<\/p>\n
The internal divisions mean the search for a new leader may drag on. Even as board members speak with other candidates, including Jeffrey Immelt, who is\u00a0departing as chief executive of General Electric, about the chief executive job, a lack of cohesion is apparent. Some board members are not convinced that Mr. Immelt is the right choice, given that G.E.\u2019s stock price and profits have stagnated in recent years.<\/p>\n
Four people are now on the shortlist to succeed Mr. Kalanick, according to one person close to the process. And at an internal meeting with Uber employees last week, Liane Hornsey, the company\u2019s senior vice president and head of human resources, said a top candidate was expected to be chosen within the next six weeks.<\/p>\n
Representatives for Uber, the company\u2019s board of directors and Mr. Kalanick declined to comment, as did G.E.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Meg has made clear, she is fully committed to H.P.E.,\u201d a spokesman for Hewlett Packard Enterprise said. \u201cOur focus remains on driving the company forward and delivering for our customers, partners, employees and shareholders.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Uber board \u2014 which recently added new members amid a history of internal tensions \u2014 is mostly split into two camps. On one side is Mr. Kalanick, who is plotting a comeback. On the other are many of the company\u2019s other directors, including the venture capitalist Matt Cohler and the\u00a0private equity\u00a0investor David Trujillo, who represent Uber investors like Benchmark and TPG Capital. Garrett Camp, an Uber co-founder, and Ryan Graves, an early employee, were part of this group in supporting Ms. Whitman\u2019s candidacy last week.<\/p>\n
The positions of some board members \u2014 such as Wan Ling Martello, a Nestle executive, and Yasir Al Rumayyan, who represents Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund \u2014 are unclear.<\/p>\n
As the factions have shifted, Arianna Huffington\u2019s role has been particularly fluid. A founder of the Huffington Post who now runs a wellness company, Thrive Global, Ms. Huffington grew close to Mr. Kalanick since being\u00a0appointed to the board\u00a0last year, according to two people familiar with the board\u2019s dynamics. Yet she advised him last month that resigning as Uber\u2019s leader was a good idea.<\/p>\n
\n \n The changing alliances have led to major disagreements within the board. Some members are upset that no chief financial officer has been appointed, even though the job has been vacant for more than two years.<\/p>\n There is also debate about the potential investment by SoftBank. Some board members believe that taking the money is unnecessary and potentially risky, given that Uber has $5.5 billion in cash on hand and that\u00a0SoftBank has backed multiple\u00a0ride-hailing\u00a0rivals\u00a0in Asia.<\/p>\n Some company executives are concerned that Mr. Kalanick could use a SoftBank investment to dilute other shareholders\u2019 stakes while he continues to buy stock back from employees in a bid to amass power. And\u00a0aligning with Masayoshi Son, the founder and chief executive of SoftBank, could provide Mr. Kalanick with a key ally, especially if Mr. Son seeks to appoint new board members who favor Mr. Kalanick\u2019s return as chief executive as part of an investment.<\/p>\n A spokesman for SoftBank declined to comment.<\/p>\n According to people with knowledge of the quarterly meeting last Thursday, board members\u2019 cell phones started buzzing during the evening with text messages regarding Ms. Whitman\u2019s removing herself from consideration. Some board members appeared crestfallen that the person they viewed as the most attractive candidate had taken herself out of the running so publicly days before she planned to spend time with the few board members she had not yet met.<\/p>\n In a text message between those involved in the discussions that was shown to The New York Times, one person reacted to Ms. Whitman\u2019s announcement with a grim laugh, punctuated by an expletive.<\/p>\n After the news of Ms. Whitman\u2019s decision sank in, the board members continued the meeting. By the end of the evening, they had agreed to a truce in hopes of avoiding another negative round of media coverage, according to the people familiar with the meeting. Communicating directly and avoiding backstabbing, the directors agreed, was paramount from here on.<\/p>\n After all, they still had a new chief executive to find.<\/p>\n \n Culled from\u00a0NYT \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Research by Tola Ojobo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SAN FRANCISCO U.S.A \u2014 Some members of Uber\u2019s eight-person board were excited about the idea of\u00a0Meg Whitman\u00a0becoming the ride-hailing company\u2019s next chief executive. Ms. Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and a former leader of eBay, appeared to have many of the right traits for the job: experience, maturity, a level head \u2014…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,47,64],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2358"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2372,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358\/revisions\/2372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Uber-CEO-prospect-2-300x200.jpg\")