London taxi drivers are drawing up a plan to sue mobile app Uber for over £1 billion (Dh4.82bn), Sky News reported on Tuesday, weeks after it was granted a temporary licence to operate in Britain's capital.
Sky News said the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association (LTDA) was likely to argue that 25,000 black-cab drivers in London had suffered lost earnings averaging around £10,000 for at least five years as a result of Uber's failings, taking the overall possible bill to £1.25bn, according to Reuters.
The report said it had engaged the law firm Mishcon de Reya to explore the options.
Uber won a probationary licence to operate in the city last month, after Transport for London had refused to renew it last September for failings in its approach to reporting serious criminal offences and background checks on drivers.
The LTDA were not immediately available for comment. Uber declined to comment.
The news comes days after food delivery start-up DoorDash named Prabir Adarkar as chief financial officer, poaching the most senior leader of Uber’s finance department.
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DoorDash chief executive Tony Xu said Mr Adarkar’s prior experience helping companies go public as a vice president at Goldman Sachs, and his time preparing Uber for its own initial public offering set for next year made him an appealing pick for the job, Bloomberg reported. At Uber, Mr Adarkar had “not just the on-demand experience but also having seen it through the hyper growth”, Mr Xu said.
The departure was another loss for Uber. The ride-hailing company has been without a chief financial officer for years and has seen frequent defections from the department. Mr Adarkar’s previous boss, Uber’s acting CFO Gautam Gupta, left about a year ago for the real-estate start-up OpenDoor Labs as the company searched for a permanent CFO.
