A major Uber investor has sued founder Travis Kalanick, accusing the recently departed chief executive of covering misdeeds while rigging the board in order to return to power at the company
Travis Kalanick. Pic/AFP
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A major Uber investor has sued founder Travis Kalanick, accusing the recently departed chief executive of covering misdeeds while rigging the board in order to return to power at the company.
Kalanick resigned in June, yielding to pressure from investors seeking to clean up a toxic corporate culture at Uber. A civil suit filed by Uber investor Benchmark Capital Partners accused Kalanick of committing fraud, breach of contract, and violating fiduciary duty by conniving to "entrench himself on Uber's board of directors and increase his power for his own selfish ends."
The suit, which calls on a Delaware court to bar Kalanick from tinkering with the Uber board in any way, argued that Kalanick saw his resignation as unavoidable and finagled to "pack the board with loyal allies in an attempt to insulate his prior conduct from scrutiny and clear the path for his eventual return as CEO."
The suit contends Kalanick essentially duped Benchmark into agreeing to expand the Uber board by three seats to 11 people, giving the then chief executive the power to appoint members.
Kalanick also didn't mention to Benchmark "a pervasive culture of gender discrimination and sexual harassment and a hose of other inappropriate and unethical directives" he issued, the suit contended.