Uber to target titans of industry in company’s CEO search

Jeffrey Immelt, outgoing CEO of GE, on a shortlist of fewer than six candidates

Uber Technologies has set its sights on the business world’s most seasoned chief executives to fill the leadership vacuum left by the departure of co-founder Travis Kalanick. Candidates for Uber CEO, including Jeffrey Immelt, must be capable of restoring confidence in the ride-hailing company after months of controversy.

Immelt, the outgoing CEO of General Electric Co, is on a shortlist of fewer than six candidates to run Uber and prepare the business for an initial public offering, people familiar with the matter said. The company has been moving to narrow the list and name a successor to Kalanick, who was ousted under pressure from some of the company’s major investors last month. Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, had also been under consideration, but she publicly withdrew her name Thursday night, saying speculation of a possible move had been a distraction.

Uber’s board met Thursday night to discuss the search and other issues, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. The San Francisco-based company hopes to name a successor Investors in the privately held ride-hailing company have lodged their own complaints against co-founder Travis Kalanick, for constraints on their stock and questionable acquisitions. The former CEO made it extremely difficult for anyone to sell their stakes and paid $680 million (Dh2.5 billion) in stock for autonomous trucking start-up Otto, a deal that soon led to a trade secrets lawsuit from Alphabet’s Waymo. The investors who pressed Kalanick to resign were led by venture capital firm Benchmark to Kalanick by early September. GE and Uber declined to comment.

Immelt, 61, is scheduled to step down this week from the CEO position at GE that he’s held since 2001. John Flannery, a 30year GE veteran, will take over, with Immelt remaining chairman until the end of the year.

Immelt embraced Silicon Valley in recent years, with the launch of a digital division in 2015 that he said could make GE a top 10 software company by the end of the decade. He has tried to bring start-up strategies to the manufacturing behemoth, and GE even adopted the slogan “the digital industrial company”.

But GE’s shares fell by about a third during Immelt’s tenure as he struggled to win the accolades bestowed on his predecessor, Jack Welch. While Immelt was praised for dramatically reshaping the manufacturer, including shedding the bulk of its volatile finance business, he faced criticism for cutting shareholder dividends in 2009 and overpaying for some acquisitions.

The new chief will inherit a long list of other challenges, many of which have been festering for years but came to a head in recent months. Uber’s fiercely capitalistic, Ayn Randian sensibilities created a brand that’s hard to love and gave opportunities to more approachable alternatives, such as rival Lyft.