{"id":357910,"date":"2017-09-29T11:52:23","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T11:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=357910"},"modified":"2017-11-10T11:07:22","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T11:07:22","slug":"uber-ceo-to-meet-london-transport-chief-after-license-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=357910","title":{"rendered":"Uber CEO to meet London transport chief after license loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\">Uber\u2019s new CEO Dara\u00a0Khosrowshahi will go to London to meet with the city\u2019s transport commissioner following the regulator\u2019s decision to withdraw licensing.<\/p>\n<p>A Transport for London (TfL) spokeswoman confirmed that the meeting will take place next Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFollowing an approach from Uber and at the mayor\u2019s request London\u2019s transport commissioner will meet with Uber\u2019s global CEO in London next Tuesday,\u201d she told us.<\/p>\n<p>The spokeswoman declined to provide any details of specific talking points for the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>An Uber spokesman also declined to provide steerage on what arguments and concessions Khosrowshahi\u00a0might be bringing to the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>But a company spokesman told\u00a0Reuters: \u201cOur new CEO is looking forward to meeting with the commissioner next week. As he said on Monday, we want to work with London to make things right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Khosrowshahi has already\u00a0apologized\u00a0for \u201cmistakes we\u2019ve made\u201d in an open letter to Londoners following TfL\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n<p>He also tweeted urging the regulator to \u201cplease work with us to make things right\u201d \u2014 apparently signaling a change in tone for a company which, under founder Travis Kalanick, gained a reputation for being aggressive and abrasive in its approach to regulators and regulation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Dear London: we r far from perfect but we have 40k licensed drivers and 3.5mm Londoners depending on us. Pls work w\/us to make things right<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dkhos\/status\/911321639953956864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 22, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nLast week\u00a0Transport for London announced it would not be renewing the ride-hailing giant\u2019s license to operate in a city where Uber claims to have some 3.5 million users and 40,000 drivers.<\/p>\n<p>Its five-year license had been renewed for a further four months in May, as TfL continued to look into criticisms directed at Uber, including concerns about public safety. With no renewal granted, that four-month extension\u00a0lapses at the end of this month. Though Uber will continue to operate in London while it appeals the decision \u2014 a process that could take many months.<\/p>\n<p>Last Friday TfL listed four areas where it said Uber\u2019s \u201capproach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility\u201d \u2014 including how it reports serious criminal offences. London\u2019s Met Police had highlighted this as a problem in a complaint letter to TfL, accusing Uber of failing to report allegations of serious crimes including sex attacks.<\/p>\n<p>The regulator also said it was not satisfied with Uber\u2019s explanation for its use of its \u2018Greyball\u2018 software in London \u2014 software which the company apparently developed to try to block regulatory bodies from gaining full access to its app and to prevent officials from undertaking regulatory or law enforcement duties.<\/p>\n<p>In its statement following TfL\u2019s decision to withdraw licensing, Uber appeared to confirm it has used Greyball in London \u2014 though it claimed it has not used the software for the regulation-dodging purposes TfL is worried about. \u201cAs we have already told TfL, an independent review has found that \u2018greyball\u2019 has never been used or considered in the UK for the purposes cited by TfL,\u201d Uber said last week.<\/p>\n<p>So the next obvious question there is what was Uber using Greyball for in London? Which will presumably be one of the concerns that London\u2019s transport commissioner\u00a0Mike Brown will be discussing with Khosrowshahi.<\/p>\n<p>The new Uber leader has a heaped plate of corporate crises to deal with \u2014\u00a0from seeking to reform\u00a0an internal culture of sexism\u00a0and bullying, to privacy and security failings so massive Uber agreed to undertake\u00a0two decades of oversight by a US regulator, to an ongoing legal battle with Alphabet over allegations of IP theft to name just a few \u2014 so it\u2019s notable that he feels the London license loss merits him taking a fair chunk of time out from all that firefighting to personally fly to Europe for a sit down with regulators.<\/p>\n<p>In itself, it\u2019s a very large sign that he wants Uber to have a new public face at least. But regulators will want to be sure there are also\u00a0changes of direction behind the scenes\u00a0\u2014 and not just some high profile virtue signalling out front.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: TechCrunch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Uber\u2019s new CEO Dara\u00a0Khosrowshahi will go to London to meet with the city\u2019s transport commissioner following the regulator\u2019s decision to withdraw licensing. A Transport for London (TfL) spokeswoman confirmed that the meeting will take place next Tuesday. \u201cFollowing an approach from Uber and at the mayor\u2019s request London\u2019s transport commissioner will meet with Uber\u2019s global [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[970,1047,114],"class_list":["post-357910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-london","tag-transport","tag-uber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}