Mr. Khosrowshahi has said Uber could go public in as little as 18 months. The threat of a London shutdown is likely to raise new questions among potential investors about the company’s global growth prospects.
“The truth is that there is a high cost to a bad reputation,” Mr. Khosrowshahi said Friday in an internal email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Irrespective of whether we did everything that is being said about us in London today (and to be clear, I don’t think we did), it really matters what people think of us.”
.. the company lost at least $3 billion last year on sales of $6.5 billion
.. At the same time, Uber has abandoned efforts to establish an independent foothold in China and Russia.
.. “3.5 million Londoners who use our app…will be astounded by this decision.” He said the regulator and London’s mayor had “caved in” to pressure from a small group of people “who wanted to restrict customer choice.” He said 40,000 licensed Uber drivers in London could lose work.
.. In 2015, London Transport proposed a raft of rules that would restrict Uber, including requiring a mandatory five-minute wait time between ordering a ride and pickup.
.. The authority didn’t provide details on specific violations, but said Uber fell short in a number of areas, including its approach to driver background checks and reporting serious criminal offenses.
.. As part of Greyball, Uber has been able to use software to hide its drivers from government officials by showing them dummy versions of its app with fake cars trawling the streets.
.. The relatively high cost of a black cab has helped make Uber popular here. A four-mile trip in the middle of a weekday costing at least £16 ($21.64) in a black cab, compared with £8 on Uber
The Benefits of Standing by the President
He heaped praise on Jared Kushner at a private gathering of bankers and corporate executives in December, congratulating President Trump’s son-in-law on the surprise election triumph.
He stood up again in May before a group of corporate leaders on the 39th floor of Citigroup’s offices to remind them of all the good the Trump administration could do for the economy and the country.
.. Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the private equity giant Blackstone and the leader of one of the councils, has not been alone on Wall Street in his embrace of the Trump presidency, particularly after the corporate world endured eight years of Obama-era regulation. But in each of these private meetings, recounted by people who attended them, Mr. Schwarzman emerged as one of the president’s most respected and reliable allies in high finance.
.. Mr. Schwarzman’s stature in both the world of finance and in Mr. Trump’s Washington helped Blackstone nail down one of the biggest deals on Wall Street this year — its selection by Saudi Arabia to manage a new $20 billion fund, according to a person with knowledge of the selection process.
In May, while the president was visiting Saudi Arabia, Blackstone announced the agreement to manage the fund, the largest in the world to invest in infrastructure projects. The announcement was made at the royal palace in Riyadh as Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner looked on.
.. the Saudis had been discussing a possible partnership with a number of other firms as well, and formally decided on Blackstone — a fund-raising juggernaut that manages funds larger than the economies of some nations — only after Mr. Schwarzman had started advising the president.
.. the company’s experience illustrates the incentives that corporate leaders have to develop strong ties with Mr. Trump — the country’s businessman in chief — and the reputational risks associated with those relationships when Mr. Trump veers off course, as he did this past week.
.. Some of the other investment firms that were in discussions about a Saudi partnership, including Brookfield and the Carlyle Group, had more experience in managing infrastructure funds and are still in talks with the Saudis
.. But while Mr. Schwarzman’s alliance with Mr. Trump is new, his ties to Mr. Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, run deeper. Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, attended Mr. Schwarzman’s 70th birthday party in February at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., near Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
.. In 2013, well before Mr. Trump was even a candidate, Blackstone financed the purchase of a few warehouses and industrial buildings by Mr. Kushner’s family company
.. Mr. Kushner is also friendly with Jon Gray, a senior Blackstone executive who runs its real estate business.
.. Mr. Kushner and Mr. Gray, a Democrat, have been photographed together at Manhattan social events, and before the election, Mr. Kushner urged the staff at the Commercial Observer newspaper, which Mr. Kushner used to run, to place Mr. Gray higher on its list of “Power 100” real estate executives, according to a former employee with knowledge of the list. In 2016, Mr. Gray was No. 1 on that list.
.. Unlike many people in Washington, Mr. Schwarzman said, Mr. Trump could accomplish tax policy reform and an infrastructure overhaul.
.. Mr. Schwarzman speaks with Mr. Trump as much as once a week, typically about the economy though also about social policy, including a conversation in which Mr. Schwarzman advised the president to continue shielding young undocumented immigrants from deportation
.. Blackstone manages about $370 billion.
He used to rule Germany. Now, he oversees Russian energy companies and lashes out at the U.S.
For seven years, Gerhard Schröder was the leader of the most populous democracy in Western Europe. He modernized the country’s social security system, angered George W. Bush by refusing to participate in the invasion of Iraq and was only narrowly ousted in an election defeat to Angela Merkel in 2005. Schröder could have easily spent the rest of his career as an elder statesman, attending summits and writing books.
Instead, Schröder — a friend of Vladimir Putin who has defended Moscow’s top man as a “flawless democrat” — opted for a career in the Russian business world.
Schröder has spent much of the past decade working for the Russian energy industry, serving as a board member of several consortia in which Russian-government-controlled energy company Gazprom is either the majority or sole shareholder
.. At a time when Russian business connections among members of Trump administration have come under growing scrutiny, Schröder’s case stands out as the perhaps most blatant example of a Western politician having conflicts of interests when it comes to Moscow. “By becoming a well-paid official of a foreign, aggressive power he has damaged the reputation of the political class more than any other living politician,”
.. he went on to criticize the United States’ “monstrous” political influence, and he urged Germans to ignore Trump’s demands to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. There was long applause for his remarks, which implied the need to improve relations with Russia.
.. Schröder’s renewed popularity among parts of the German left has also stunned conservatives, who are concerned about possible Russian election interference in September.
.. As chancellor, Schröder championed the North Stream pipeline deal with Russia. The German government pursued the offshore pipeline between Russia and Germany to cut energy costs and establish a reliable supply route, but the U.S. largely viewed it as a Russian attempt to make Europe more dependent on the Kremlin.
.. Fears in Washington over the pipeline date back to 2005, when Schröder hastily signed the deal during his last days in office. Then, just weeks after leaving politics, he began to oversee the implementation of the gas pipeline project himself — this time as a businessman in Russia and as the head of Nord Stream AG’s shareholder committee.
.. In 2014, at the height of the Ukraine crisis, Schröder celebrated his 70th birthday with Putin, sparking an international backlash. By opting for a post-politics business career in Russia, his critics said, Schröder had essentially chosen to join the Putin administration.
.. He’s also remembered as a “fighter with guts,” as Benner put it, for standing up to the U.S. during the Iraq War — something the Trump era may call for again.
.. Schröder’s rehabilitation also fits in with the traditional patterns of German politics. “Germans on the left and the far right have always had a weak spot for Moscow
.. “If Putin had not invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine, many Germans would see him as a natural ally in times of transatlantic estrangement.”
.. With global confidence in the U.S. in free-fall due to the Trump administration’s policies, Schröder and other pro-Russian voices in Germany are finding it easier again to defend Putin, said Bierling — and so, too, are many Germans finding it easier to forgive and forget when it comes to their former leader.
If you work for Trump, it’s time to quit
You hate that people are shying away from administration jobs in droves: Just this week, in rapid succession, Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Trey Gowdy withdrew their names from consideration as replacements for former FBI Director James Comey, the guy your boss fired. Whatever department you’re in, it’s a safe bet that it’s a whispering graveyard of empty appointments and unfilled jobs.
.. after all, just a few days after taking office, he assured us, “I can be the most presidential person ever.”
.. You figured Trump would turn his political capital into big wins, and that his lack of interest in policy details would let you and your friends in Congress set the agenda. Sure, you knew you’d have to feed Trump’s ego and let him take a victory lap after every success, but you also thought you might claim a smidgen of credit for
- a popular infrastructure bill,
- a big tax cut,
- repeal of Obamacare
- or a host of other “easy” lifts.
.. you’re really not doing much except playing defense and wondering which of your colleagues is leaking to The Washington Post.
.. If you’ve been ordained to appear on television as an administration surrogate, you know by now that your task isn’t to advocate for your agency or issue, but to lavish the president with praise.
.. You already know you can’t save the president because he doesn’t want to be saved. You already know there’s not another, better version of Trump getting ready to show up.
.. When this regime falls, do you want to be among those who said “not me,” or do you want to go out like a Baath Party generalissimo?
Sticking with Trump to the bitter end and pretending the unfolding chaos is just “fake news” won’t save your reputation as the walls close in.
.. Cutting ties with a man who is destructive to our values, profoundly divisive, contemptuous of the rule of law and incontrovertibly unfit to serve in the highest office in the land just might. Do it now.