Uber Technologies Inc plans to keep co-founder Travis Kalanick as chief executive following a series of damaging events at the ride services company, a member of its board said on Tuesday in a rare call with reporters. "The board has confidence in Travis," said Arianna Huffington, co-founder of news site Huffington Post and one of seven voting Uber board members. The possibility of him resigning has not "come up and we don't expect it to come up," she said. But she added that Kalanick, 40, needed to change his leadership style from that of a "scrappy entrepreneur" to be more like a "leader of a major global company."
The privately held company, valued at $68 billion, is pushing ahead in its search for a chief operating officer to help Kalanick run the business, but gave no hints on possible candidates or timing of an appointment. Huffington and three Uber executives on the call said they were working on repairing the company's tarnished image and improving its culture and leadership after a series of embarrassing setbacks, including allegations of sexual harassment from a former employee and the recent departure of its president, Jeff Jones, who cited deep misgivings about the company. Kalanick was not on the call.
Uber expects to conclude an internal investigation into the sexual harassment allegations by the end of April, Huffington said The investigation was prompted by a former Uber employee who last month published a blog post describing a workplace where sexual harassment was common and went unpunished.
-Reuters, San Francisco
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