SAN FRANCISCO, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Travis Kalanick, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Uber Technologies Inc., reportedly agreed Tuesday to step down from the top position at the technology company offering ride-hailing services.
The co-founder of Uber, a San Francisco-based startup currently estimated to be worth 68 billion U.S. dollars, was forced out by a shareholder revolt, launched by five of the company's major investors, according to a New York Times report.
Holding a type of stock that endows them with an outsize number of votes, collectively about 40 percent of Uber's voting power, the investors delivered a letter to Kalanick earlier Tuesday, demanding that the 40-year-old CEO resign immediately, two anonymous sources were quoted as telling the newspaper.
The New York Times claimed it had obtained the letter, titled "Moving Uber Forward."
Hours later, after discussions with some of the investors, Kalanick accepted their request.
Last Tuesday, Kalanick announced he would take time off from Uber as recommended by an outside team. The same day, Uber issued a statement regarding recommendations by the team from law firm Covington & Burling LLP together with a 13-page list of what Uber was supposed to do to "improve our culture, promote fairness and accountability, and establish processes and systems to ensure the mistakes of the past will not be repeated."
While "tone at the top, trust, transformation, and accountability" were proposed to be "remedial measures" for the company, the first specific recommendation regarding leadership changes was to "review and reallocate the responsibilities of Travis Kalanick."
The outside team, led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, was hired to launch an internal investigation a day after Susan Fowler, a former engineer at Uber, detailed in a blog posting on Feb. 19 allegations of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation during her employment at the company, and ineffectiveness of its policies and procedures.
However, at the time, Kalanick cited the need to grieve for the loss of his mother, who died in a boating accident in May, for his decision to take an indefinite leave of absence.
"For the past eight years my life has always been about Uber," Kalanick wrote in an internal email. "Recent events have brought home for me that people are important than work, and that I need to take some time off of the day-to-day to grieve my mother, whom I buried on Friday, to reflect, to work on myself, and to focus on building out a world-class leadership team."
Kalanick has been criticized for his management styles, and for allowing Uber's corporate culture to harbor some abusive behaviors.
He still retains control of a majority voting shares of Uber, the company he co-founded in 2009, and will remain on its board of directors, the New York Times reported.
