Uber board member Arianna Huffington says the firm will likely reach a deal with SoftBank within a week
Greg Bensinger / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a board-level reassurance at a delicate moment in a negotiation that has been running since summer: SoftBank first approached Uber about a multibillion-dollar investment in July, with sources saying any deal would likely require a new CEO, and by September the reported shape was up to $10B for a 17-22% stake. Arianna Huffington, on the board since April 2016, is publicly putting a one-week clock on it.
The confidence proved premature but directionally right: two weeks later the deal was reported in jeopardy after Travis Kalanick pushed back on a provision requiring majority board approval of directors he appoints, before Uber announced an agreement with a consortium led by SoftBank and Dragoneer in mid-November.
First-order effects
- A signed SoftBank deal would hand Uber a major cash infusion and give SoftBank a 17-22% stake, while forcing resolution of the Kalanick board-control provision that nearly derailed it.
Second-order effects
- The governance terms — majority approval over Kalanick's future director appointments — effectively settle the internal power struggle between the founder's faction and the reconstituted board, clearing the way for the new-CEO condition SoftBank attached from the start of talks.
Third-order effects
- SoftBank taking a dominant minority position in Uber prefigures its later pattern with the company, including the reported $1B round in Uber's self-driving unit alongside Toyota and Denso ahead of an IPO — large strategic stakes as the mechanism for steering Uber toward public markets.
The trend: SoftBank is consolidating influence over ride-hailing through large pre-IPO stakes paired with governance conditions, using capital to reshape founder-controlled companies.