Uber woos US industry titan to be new chief

THe boss of US manufacturing behemoth General electric is being considered to run the scandal-hit online taxi firm Uber, insiders claim.

After 16 years at the helm of Ge, Jeff Immelt is one of the most experienced chief executives in American big business.

He is due to retire at the end of this month following concerns about the company’s underwhelming stock performance. However, Immelt is widely credited for transforming its fortunes by axing operations when they failed to perform.

A similarly tough and exhaustive job would lie in wait for him at privately owned Uber, which is valued at £38bn but has been beset by attacks over its sexist culture.

Claims that female staff were propositioned for sex while senior managers looked the other way eventually forced founder Travis Kalanick to quit as chief executive five weeks ago.

It is not clear how interested Immelt would be in the job, which would be a radically different role to running a longestablished firm with huge revenues such as Ge.

His name emerged as IT company Hewlett Packard’s head Meg Whitman declared that despite speculation she was not interested in the role.

In a series of posts on Twitter, Whitman said: ‘Let me make this as clear as I can. I am fully committed to Hewlett Packard and plan to remain.

‘We have a lot of work still to do at HPe and I am not going anywhere.’