Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi ‘anxious’ over murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Uber
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
Getty

• Uber’s chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi is ‘anxious’
  to learn about the circumstances behind the murder of
  journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
• Saudi Arabia has denied that it had a direct hand in
  Khashoggi’s killing.
• Saudi Arabia has a board seat at Uber and has invested
  at least $3.5 billion into the company.
• Khosrowshahi said the kingdom still deserves its board
  seat while the public awaits the facts.

Uber’s chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi has said he is “anxious”
for more information about the murder of journalist Jamal
Khashoggi, and any role Saudi Arabia may have played in the
killing.

Uber is the second most valuable private company in the world,
with a purported valuation of $72 billion. It has taken $3.5
billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and its
biggest shareholder is SoftBank, whose Vision Fund is also backed
by Saudi Arabia.

That deeply entwined relationship gives PIF’s managing director
and Saudi royal adviser Yasir Othman Al-Rumayyan a board seat
and, according to Khosrowshahi, this won’t change until more
information emerges about Khashoggi’s demise.

Yasir
al-Rumayyan, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment
Fund.
Reuters

Khosrowshahi told The Wall Street
Journal‘s Tech D.Live conference on Tuesday: “Once we get the
facts and understand exactly what happens, we will do our best to
react as a company, and the company is a bunch of humans making
judgements and, you know, one of our norms is we do the right
thing, period.

“But that’s based on our judgement on what the right thing is,
and this is a situation that isn’t entirely clear.”

The Uber chief added that Saudi is “a big investor in the
company” and the company had a fiduciary duty to its backers.

“They have a board seat and so far they’ve been a terrific board
member. So until we learn more, we’re not in a position to act in
one way or another,” he said. “The act itself [Khashoggi’s
murder] was horrible, and we’re anxious to learn more and then
we’ll talk to our board and then we’ll decide what the best way
forward.”

Khosrowshahi acknowledged that going public next year, which Uber
reportedly intends to do in the first half of 2019, will help
solve the Saudi problem. “At that point, anyone is free to be a
shareholder one way or the other, and we enter into public land,”
he said.

Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest funders of Silicon Valley
startups, either through the PIF or through SoftBank’s Vision
Fund. Saudi money accounts for almost half of the Vision Fund.
Apart from Uber, there’s Vision Fund money in WeWork and Slack,
all prominent firms on the brink of going public, as well as a
scattering of smaller firms.

Read more:


SoftBank committed another $3 billion to WeWork, and the deal
could value the office sharing firm at around $42
billion

These companies must decide how that financial relationship
continues. A key question is whether Saudi Arabia ordered the
killing of Khashoggi, a dissident writer, something the kingdom
denies. But the UK, French, and German governments have pressed
the regime to give a full account of what happened.

Jamal
Khashoggi.
Reuters

What is known is that Khashoggi walked into the Saudi embassy in
Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2, where he was brutally killed.
According to the Turkish government, Saudi agents working on
behalf of the government were responsible. Saudi Arabia
acknowledged his murder, but denied that it had a hand in his
killing.

Khosrowshahi, along with several other tech leaders, pulled out
of a major investment conference hosted by the kingdom a
fortnight after Khashoggi’s murder.

Khosrowshahi told the Wall Street Journal: “When I pulled out of
the conference, we didn’t follow the herd on that, we were quite
early there. We didn’t know the facts but we thought that it was
inappropriate for us to go at that point, based on what had
happened. Now we’re in a situation where we can wait to get the
facts.”