Uber has selected Zane Rowe as one of the top contenders for the position of its chief financial officer to lead and lay the groundwork for its upcoming initial public offering in 2019. Rowe is currently working with VMWARE as CFO.
While the discussion is in progress, an agreement hasn’t been finalized between the two as of now. One of the people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified, also said that there are chances that the negotiation could fall through even at this point.
Before his association with VMWare, Rowe was working with Continental Airlines as their CFO; he was also in charge of American sales at Apple Inc. If the discussion between Rowe and Uber turns out to be positive, Rowe would be the latest high-profile person to join the executive ranks under the management of Uber’s Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi.
Since joining Uber, Khosrowshahi already hired some high profile executive team members to work under him, including PepsiCo Inc’s Tony West as the chief legal counsel and Orbitz’s Barney Harford as the Chief operating officer.
Uber has also implied that they would be seeking women for other roles. However, CEO Khosrowshahi said that he wouldn’t like to get in a bidding war for talent. “The focus on recruitment is a little bit of a sugar high,” he said onstage at the Women in the World Summit in New York. “My focus at Uber isn’t going to get a sugar high. It’s to develop the great women we already have at Uber and to make them be great senior women at Uber.”
The CFO position in the company has been open since 2015. Considering the fact that the company is currently valued at $72 billion, the IPO would be one of the most important public-market debuts. And as the mounting pressure increases on this San Francisco-based company to gear up for the IPO, the company would need a strong hand to take them through. Hiring Rowe would help Uber get closer to its goal of achieving this target by 2019.
No official comment on this matter has been given by either company so far.
