Benchmark vs. Travis Kalanick

Benchmark’s controversial, explosive lawsuit against Travis Kalanick is officially history.

A judge on Thursday permanently dismissed the venture firm’s case against the former Uber CEO following Benchmark’s agreement to dismiss the suit. That ends a messy legal entanglement that was a leading part of Benchmark’s attempt over the last six months to marginalize Kalanick. It was Benchmark that led his ouster from the CEO chair at Uber.

A “peace deal” to settle an ugly boardroom war at Uber is expected to be signed today or tomorrow. If all goes well — and this is a big “if” still since, well, Uber — it should clear the way for a multi-billion dollar tender offer by SoftBank and other investors that would allow employees to sell up to half their stock in the car-hailing giant.

Bloomberg first reported on the wide-ranging agreement that was struck this weekend to bring an end to the acrimony between former CEO and Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick and its major investor Benchmark.

Uber’s board on Tuesday approved a series of governance changes that are expected to curtail Travis Kalanick’s power and pave the way for a massive investment by SoftBank, the Japanese investment giant that is set on acquiring a piece of the private market’s most valuable company.

The sweeping deal is provisional on SoftBank finalizing its investment, but would include expanding the 11 board seats to as many as 17 people, an enormous group of decision-makers for what is already a fraught board. That will include three independent directors voted on by the board, including a chairperson, and up to three seats for SoftBank, depending on the size of the investment.

Pity new Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Cleaning up yet another mess created by his pugnacious predecessor Travis Kalanick, the former Expedia CEO flew to London yesterday to prostrate himself before regulators this morning.

Point for ousted Uber CEO Travis Kalanick: Under the company’s current voting agreement, Uber is obligated to seat two directors, former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns and former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain. He appointed both to Uber’s board yesterday.

While that agreement is part of litigation (now in private arbitration) that one of the car-hailing company’s biggest investors, Benchmark, is waging against him, only a successful attempt by the venture firm to stay the action will stop them from joining at a planned Tuesday board meeting.

A principal at Benchmark is quietly decamping to a competing firm, the first public departure since the storied venture capital firm launched a controversial lawsuit against the former CEO of its most valuable portfolio company, Uber.

Kris Fredrickson, the Benchmark principal, is taking a job next month at the hedge fund Coatue Management. The job move amounts to a promotion, but Fredrickson is also a character in Benchmark’s legal and public relations fight against former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.

A judge granted former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick a legal win on Wednesday by sending an explosive lawsuit brought by his investors to arbitration rather than ordering it to play out in his courtroom.

The decision is the latest dramatic turn in a rift between Kalanick and Benchmark Capital, once one of his closest allies, and moves the ugly fight between them out of the spotlight as Uber’s new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, tries to assert control.

The battle over the future of Uber heads today to a courtroom in Delaware, where an unprecedented lawsuit of founder versus venture firm could either be placed on a fast track or thrown out entirely.

In what is likely to be a heated argument over the legacy of Uber’s lightning rod of a founder and former CEO, attorneys for both Travis Kalanick and one of the car-hailing company’s largest investors, Benchmark Capital, will square off in the first oral argument in the month-old case.

The selection of a new CEO by Uber’s board of directors has not quashed the legal fight between its members.

Lawyers for ousted CEO Travis Kalanick on Monday filed new papers in the lawsuit brought by Benchmark, the venture firm that is suing Kalanick for fraud. Despite their disagreements over Uber’s direction and over the CEO search, both Benchmark and Kalanick remain on the board.

Uber investor Shervin Pishevar, who is trying to make other Uber investor Benchmark’s life a holy hell, has filed yet another legal bullet today, demanding company paperwork on whether the Silicon Valley venture firm leaked confidential information.

Ironies pile on top of ironies here, don’t they? This Uber mess has been one of the leakiest ships I have encountered since my time on the S.S. Yahoo, with all kinds of information flowing from all sides at all times to all reporters.

Uber investor Shervin Pishevar has filed a legal document and also sent a letter to the board of the car-hailing company today, saying he had to “intervene” in the lawsuit brought by Benchmark against ousted CEO Travis Kalanick.

Yes, more mess at Uber, which must come as a shock to one and all. You can read the legal docs he has filed below, which call for the litigation to be sent to arbitration, among other things.

Benchmark Capital punched back Thursday against a bid by ousted Uber CEO Travis Kalanick to quash Benchmark’s credibility, escalating the conflict in what has become Silicon Valley’s preeminent drama.

Benchmark, an Uber board member that is suing Kalanick after removing him from the top job, said in a new court filing that Kalanick’s attorneys “do not dispute the overwhelming factual basis” that Kalanick defrauded Uber’s board and deems his defense to be “facile.”

For most of the year to date, Uber and President Donald Trump often seemed to be in competition for the scandal of the day. Sometimes Uber has been in the news because of its ties to the president; at other times, it was because of its own internal culture. At the moment, Uber is making headlines mostly because of a mess at the executive level, as the company searches for a replacement for ousted CEO Travis Kalanick and deals with myriad lawsuits.

To help you keep up, here’s a timeline of everything Uber has been through this year.

Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is not taking Benchmark’s “public” and “personal attack” lying down. In a court filing, Kalanick is again seeking to move Benchmark’s lawsuit to arbitration, which is usually binding.

Kalanick calls Benchmark’s claims — that he defrauded the firm into signing amendments to the board’s voting agreements — fabrications. He further accuses the firm of ambushing him with pressure to resign while he was grieving the death of his mother.

I never met a messy corporate memo that I did not love to publish.

And it’s the same with all the media covering the ever-worsening civil war that is taking place at Uber these days. Which is why you should look no further than the leaks and counter-leaks of letters and memos and legal briefs and whatnot from the two sides vying for power to understand the state of play at the car-hailing company.

Tension in Uber’s upper ranks have already ricocheted to every corner of the company. An early investor has sued ex-CEO Travis Kalanick just as he tussles with the board over the search for his successor. Meanwhile, deep-pocketed suitors are circling for a piece of the $70 billion startup.

We know Uber is in advanced talks with a consortium of investors as part of a deal that would allow some early backers to cash out and could resolve some of the stewing and have enormous implications for the company’s future.

Early Uber investor Shervin Pishevar sent Benchmark Capital another letter asking the firm to step away from the company’s board of directors. In the letter, which Recode obtained, Pishevar claims that Benchmark is working with another major investor — Lowercase Capital — in its effort to remove former CEO Travis Kalanick from the board.

Pishevar also claims that Benchmark is seeking to remove Arianna Huffington from the board of directors.

Benchmark Capital sent a letter to Uber employees to explain why the firm decided to sue former CEO Travis Kalanick.

“We know that many of you are asking why Benchmark filed a lawsuit against Travis last week,” the letter reads. “Perhaps the better question is why we didn’t act sooner.”

Ousted Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has hired a new set of lawyers who are seeking to move the lawsuit brought by Benchmark Capital to arbitration instead of to a courtroom.

Kalanick will be represented in the Benchmark case by Potter Anderson & Corroon, according to documents filed Monday, and their attorneys Donald J. Wolfe Jr., Brad Davey and Matt Belger. Wolfe has substantial experience in corporate lawsuits that appear in the Court of Chancery in Delaware, where he is based; he represented National Amusements in the Viacom-Redstone case, along with Walmart as it battled allegations of bribery in Mexico.

A group of Uber shareholders sent Benchmark Capital a letter asking the firm to step down from the board of directors and to divest its shares, Axios reported. The letter was written in response to a lawsuit Benchmark filed against ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and the company on Thursday.

The key thing to understand is some of the investors are Kalanick loyalists such as Sherpa Capital’s Shervin Pishevar and Yucaipa Companies’ Ron Burkle. Maverick’s Adam Leber has also signed the letter.

Gabriel Puliatti is an up-and-coming company CEO who, at some point in his career, will need to raise money from investors.

Don’t count on Benchmark Capital being one of them.

When Bill Gurley wrote six weeks ago that Travis Kalanick had earned “many pages in the history books,” this probably wasn’t what he had in mind.

Fresh off ousting Kalanick from the CEO role at Uber, Gurley wrote late that evening on Twitter that “very few entrepreneurs have had such a lasting impact on the world.” What was left unsaid was that Gurley and his venture capital firm, Benchmark, were fuming over what they considered a cover-up that — as the investor’s firm alleged in a lawsuit today — amounted to high-profile dupery.

Benchmark Capital may have just given another Uber investor some legal ammo by filing a bombshell complaint against the company and its former CEO Travis Kalanick. Central to Benchmark’s allegations that Kalanick committed fraud and breach of fiduciary duty is Alphabet’s self-driving lawsuit against Uber.

According to the complaint, Kalanick did not disclose to the board what he knew about Alphabet’s allegations of trade secret misappropriation before the board signed off on Uber’s acquisition of self-driving startup Otto.

So, what exactly does Benchmark hope to achieve by suing Uber’s former CEO?

Here’s the recourse they’re seeking in the lawsuit filed today:

The extraordinary lawsuit from Benchmark Capital against Travis Kalanick, the former CEO of Uber, its most valuable portfolio company, boils down to a series of ugly claims that Benchmark said shows Kalanick’s “gross mismanagement.”

Meanwhile, Kalanick called the lawsuit “completely without merit and riddled with lies and false allegations.”