Travis Kalanick, a Former CEO of Uber Technologies Inc., is someone who has always boasted of not selling any shares. However, there are reports at this moment that the Co-founder of the ride-hailing company is planning to sell about 29% of his stake.
The former CEO might reap a whopping $1.4 billion with SoftBank Group Corp and a consortium of investors. The investors have reportedly agreed to purchase equity, valuing Uber at $48 billion. As of now, the American businessman owns 10% of the company. What he has offered to sell is about one-half of his stake. Though due to the limits outlined in the agreement between Uber and the buyers, he was compelled to pare back the amount. These are confirmed by company people who didn’t want their identity to be revealed.
Travis, on paper, is one of the wealthiest people in the world. This sale would make him an actual billionaire.
Last year, the taxi firm’s former Chief was pressured to resign the company. He got himself into legal woes and a raft of government investigations due to his business procedures. There was also a clash between him & Benchmark. Benchmark is one of the earliest and biggest investors of the global taxi technology company, which is also selling a part of the stake.
The sellers cannot sell more than 58% of their initial shares. This does not allow Kalanick to sell such a huge share. On being asked about that, spokesmen for Uber and Kalanick didn’t comment.
GV, Alphabet Inc.’s venture capital firm, has recently offered about half of its stake in the ride-hailing firm. It is quite surprising given the fact that Alphabet’s self-driving car subsidiary Waymo is suing Uber for stealing trade secrets. CapitalG, another Alphabet investment firm led an investment for Lyft Inc. in 2017. Lyft Inc. happens to be one of Uber’s biggest competitors in the U.S.
The SoftBank deal will most probably be closed by the end of this month. This deal will reduce Kalanick’s influence to a certain extent for sure.
