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Speaker 1: Peter, You write that much of the blame for Uber's

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Speaker 1: legal troubles has been directed at the former CEO, Travis Kalanik,

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Speaker 1: who wanted to test the law explain that and the

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Speaker 1: support for that. Well, uh, he hired people who shared

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Speaker 1: his view that it was okay to push legal boundaries

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Speaker 1: and two pick fights with regulators in cities all over

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Speaker 1: the world. And that strategy uh got Uber into a

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Speaker 1: fair amount of legal trouble, and the new CEO went

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Speaker 1: on an apology tour to try to smooth out disputes

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Speaker 1: in various cities. So which problems has Uber managed to resolve?

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Speaker 1: Legal problems? Well, uh, you You may recall it had

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Speaker 1: a big lawsuit over trade secret staffed by Alphabet inks

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Speaker 1: WEYMO unit over self driving technology, and that was in

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Speaker 1: the middle of a trial last year when a settlement

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Speaker 1: was suddenly reached. Uh, so that went away. And then

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Speaker 1: also Uber faced uh allegations of a toxic workplace environment,

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Speaker 1: particularly for women engineers, and a lawsuit over that was

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Speaker 1: settled with a ten million dollar payment for more than

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Speaker 1: four hundred women, female and minority engineers over sexual harassment

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Speaker 1: and gender UH disparity in pay claims, and Uber has

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Speaker 1: also managed to undo an operations ban in London, one

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Speaker 1: of its biggest markets. UH and Uber also managed to

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Speaker 1: UH quietly settle claim aims that it's UH drivers UM

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Speaker 1: UH sexually harassed or abused UH female passengers. Is there

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Speaker 1: a problem still with its basic business model of drivers

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Speaker 1: who are not employees but independent contractors? That is actually

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Speaker 1: one of the biggest issues that Uber has yet to resolve,

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Speaker 1: because it's business model hinges on paying independent contractors a

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Speaker 1: wage that doesn't cover benefits and other perks typically offered

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Speaker 1: to full time employees. And so if if courts in

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Speaker 1: the UK, Europe, and the US we're all to decide

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Speaker 1: that Uber needs to treat those drivers as employees, the

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Speaker 1: cost of its workforce would rise dramatically. Are they facing

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Speaker 1: criminal investigations? We don't know the status of various criminal

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Speaker 1: probes which were said to have been in play back

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Speaker 1: at the end of two thousand seventeen, and Uber hasn't

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Speaker 1: said anything about various probes over UH from the Justice

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Speaker 1: Department over everything from UH pricing to allegations of using

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Speaker 1: UH spywear to keep tabs on its competitors, And the

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Speaker 1: Justice Department hasn't said anything either. So UH, we we

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Speaker 1: don't know exactly where those investigations are at. Describe a

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Speaker 1: little bit more how Derrak Kasra Shah he is acting

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Speaker 1: as CEO as far as the lawsuits and how different

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Speaker 1: he is from Klinic. Well, he brought in very early

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Speaker 1: in his tenure UH new management, including a new General Council,

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Speaker 1: Eric Holder, who came from the Justice Department, and UH

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Speaker 1: he has made it a priority to UH, as I mentioned,

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Speaker 1: travel to various cities to deal with regulatory disputes and

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Speaker 1: also for his UM legal team to resolve outstanding issues

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Speaker 1: and also just to send a message throughout them throughout

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Speaker 1: the company's workforce that UM compliance is important and that

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Speaker 1: cutting corners UH, particularly in ways that may be illegal

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Speaker 1: or unethical, is not going to be tolerated. What does

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Speaker 1: this mean for an I p O? Is he going

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Speaker 1: to be able to be on track with taking U

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Speaker 1: republic within what eighteen to their six months? Right? So

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Speaker 1: he he came on board UM and and and projected

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Speaker 1: UH one and a half to three years from August

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Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, and UH he still is on track.

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Speaker 1: The issue at the moment is that UBER has submitted

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Speaker 1: confidential filings for review by the Securities Exchange Commission before

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Speaker 1: it can formally do its uh initial public offering, and

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Speaker 1: UH it's it's believed that that that review has been

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Speaker 1: somewhat delayed by the government shutdown, the thirty five day shutdown,

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Speaker 1: and that uh um the sec still needs to give

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Speaker 1: feedback to Uber before it can UH formalize it's going public.

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Speaker 1: What kind of impact monetarily did the scandals and the

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Speaker 1: settling of these lawsuits have on uber bottom line? Well, UH, Initially,

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Speaker 1: UH it knocked a big chunk almost a third of

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Speaker 1: Uber's valuation at the time sixty nine billion dollars. Uber

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Speaker 1: was one of the very uh most valuable UM startups

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Speaker 1: on the planet. And since then, UM, uber has managed

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Speaker 1: to regain that valuation and then some. It's now valued

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Speaker 1: in the low seventy billions UM and is you know,

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Speaker 1: still uh somewhere in the in the very top of

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Speaker 1: of of UH startups. So um uh you know. So,

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Speaker 1: So the bottom line is Uber has been able to

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Speaker 1: weather these these these with legal difficulties. But we don't

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Speaker 1: know exactly how much Uber has spent along the way

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Speaker 1: because it's not a public company and there's not full

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Speaker 1: transparency about uh, it's expenses for legal costs and such.

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Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much, Peter. It's a great article.

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Speaker 1: That's Peter Bloomberg. He is Bloomberg News Legal editor, and

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Speaker 1: the article is Uber's drive to clean up its act

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Speaker 1: en route to an I p O