Good wednesday morning im Carl Quintanilla what a morning markets are not moving much. Travis kalanick is stepping down as ceo from the company he founded back in 2009 in a statement he said, this is a Bold Decision and a sign of his devotion and love for Uber Kalanick will remain on the board. Joining me is executive editor kara swisher who famously profiled travis in vanity fair. Not long ago, well walk through what our discussion entailed. He was the ceo of a mess they are cleaning up now. Thats pretty basic. They are resistant to remove a ceo in the founder of technology, but a number of things have been going wrong from the Sexual Harassment allegations, the retaliatory behavior, to the gray balling, it just adds up to a really situation there where they understripped some of the responsibilities from him. And they decided to act because they were worried about their investment interest, i think. Kara, from a fundraiser standpoint can we be that specific yet . From the ipo standpoint, they couldnt take this company public, come on. Theres just too much. Its just too much that wall street could chew on and i think more importantly they need to raise money again they are going to need, according to a lot of people ive talked to, and you have to wonder how they are going to get that you know, the investors, lets be clear here, the investors tolerated this behavior for a long time as it was going up but i think the public pressure, the media pressure, all the results of the holder report that was leased last week just wasnt enough. It put him on a leave of absence. But by no means is uber ready for a brave move by anybody. All this stuff just continues. And i think bill gurley who is a benchmark investor, he was on the board, he didnt get his way last week but got it this week. Kara, is this just one incident, or are they going to rethink the decadelong foundercontrol move it worked for facebook and google you can argue whether it worked for snap but it did not work for uber are we going to see investors push back on founders of pop startups wanting control . Or is this just an uber thing . Well, john, they want to make more money theres not enough money in the world for these people thats fine, thats capitalism like that. But sometimes it works like Mark Zuckerberg is a good man and he, you know, he had a lot of good executives around him. In the case of uber, there wasnt enough control or training for kalanick. He is much older than zuckerberg and they never put into place the systems that were necessary that led to the Sexual Harassment of retaliatory behavior of the sketchy moves to stop regulators from checking what they were doing and so, you know, i think its been an unusual case just taken so far down the road you can see it happening with a lot of other people. Its worked well for google. Its worked well for facebook. Its worked well for a lot of companies. Kara, what happens to the board . I think they need a lot of new people and i wouldnt be surprised if theres a shakeup on this there are a lot of independent directors if they need to go public but they have a lot of different voices to counter the founder. So well see i think they will probably bring in, you know, i have heard names like meg whitman coming onto the board. Or people that dont necessarily have money interest in it. Or an employment interest. So, you know, there are all kinds of people you can bring in allen mulali, there are a lot of people that would be a very good stuard steward of a company uber is a remarkable project that has changed transportation. So you have to focus on that, i think, with putting great people in place it takes a brand and a product further. Kara, you have walked us through the companys story for so long. We know you will continue to do so we didnt have much time with you today, but thank you very much thank you so much joining us from one market in San Francisco, steve is from Foundation Capital that invested in uber. Steve, its good to see you this morning. Hi, john, good to see you if you were on the board, what would your vote have been i for sure would have supported this transition. I think it is long overdue as kara just outlined theres a strong gafational pull in the valley to support founders as long as you possibly can. But the one thing you just cannot overcome is when you have lost the team. And i think it was clear that travis had lost the team and recruiting here is hard. And if you have a culture that basically doesnt attract half of the population of talent, its very, very hard to overcome but steve, we just had linkedn on a couple weeks ago. And their data showed despite all the negative headlines around uber, people are still collaborating to work there. What is the lesson we are going to take away from this kara said this is an isolated incident they are still going to back founders by and large. Is this just a Better Process as you grow i think its deeper than that i think you establish your culture very, very early on. And the Companies Need to start thinking about inclusion from day zero it is very hard to bolt on it will be the challenge for uber its going to have to start at the board. Its going to have to start very quickly with a new Management Team so i think this is going to be jacking up the house and replacing the foundation this is a hard way to do it. The right way is to start at the beginning and really build those things in from the earliest days just to push back a little bit, steve, because so many of our guests, investors and management professionals on our air today have said that this is the right move i dont want to defend kalanicks behavior at all, but i think it was widely telegraphed he was a fighter and disrupter and fought with the regulators and fought with reporters and competitors. And thats what helped lead him to the amazing success and evaluation uber got. And i just wonder without him there, without that sort of disruptive force, it may be for better given where uber is and some of the recent rell ovati rs but is that going to be a problem for uber it goes back to my first point, why when we look at companies as investors, if you can figure out a way to support the founder who is have the deep sense, who have the fighting instinct who arent going to rest until their vision of the future comes to pass, we love that in our Management Teams and our founders sort of carry that tore ch. And so i think that doesnt change here in Silicon Valley. And i think its for sure a challenge for uber to figure out how to maintain that his involvement, i think, on the board will matter in this regard but i do think were also entering a different phase of the companys history. So if you think about the first seven years, its been about wild growth. And that growth, by the way, was intoxicating it was intoxicating for the investors, for the Board Members and hit a lot of sins. This next phase, in my opinion, is all about profitable growth for this company to go public in the next two to three years, they have to demonstrate they can grow in a rational way across many geographies and really establish a long term business so that is the next chapter. Its not always the troops that storm the beaches that are the right ones to set up the government and i think thats the case here stay with us. Well go to aditi roy in San Francisco. Aditi . Reporter hi, there we managed to talk to a couple of people that didnt want to be on camera, but one of them told us theres been a lot of confusion in the company for the last several months as they deal with the challenges. And they said it was probably the right decision for Travis Kalanick to step down. They said that investors are very critical to the company so he believes this is the right step forward in the company trying to move past some of these challenges another employee told us, though, that he doesnt work directly with travis that he does believe that travis should have been given a Second Chance and he says hes noticed a lot of positive changes in the company the last several months as they have been grappling with the issues of harassment and culture. We did talk to a number of uber users, people who simply work or live in San Francisco here and the vast majority of them said this was the right move, that they believe that it was the right thing for travis to step down for the company to move forward and sending a message to Silicon Valley about not tolerating some of these challenges that they have been dealing with guys, back to you. Aditi roy in San Francisco, aditi, thank you very much for that steve, your oped, meanwhile, on a different topic would have been huge if not for the uber news, but we do want to chat about it. You talk about why apple should buy netflix, vertical integration, International Expansion and then i love the way you put it, one more thing, to quote the man with the black turtleneck yep yeah, for sure i mean, i think apple is sort of plotting along right now we talked about this a couple weeks ago out of the wwdc event. Taking out whole foods, we saw apples approach to Sony Pictures executives. And my point of view is they need more than two executives. Because i think apple fundamentally is about emotion and the emotional connection with consumers and the content in entertainment so its time for a bigger move here steve, its john ford i love that you stuck your neck out here and wrotethis i completely disagree that apple should buy netflix and because of this, netflixs strength it seems to me is everywhere apples strength, when it does service this right, is vertical integration. In order for them to make netflix worthwhile, they have to make it work better on ios, pull it back from other places, and that would ruin netflix. Plus, apples already some of the advice was hosted if you think about true integration and look upstream to content production and downstream to distribution, the ultimate vertical integration is to buy netflix and become the first Global Tv Network that the content business, whether it is music or Digital Media and entertainment, this is one of our Truly International assets and i think if you look at half of netflix subscribers are international. Youtube has 80 of their users internationally. This would be an opportunity for apple and netflix together to become a True International monopoly in this if that happens, well bring up this piece of tape. Thank you, steve author of the new book the way to design. When we come back, cignas first inve Investment Option and well talk to the ceo and jack ma on fintech and star wars has a director shakeup. Well talk about the hollywood news when we come back [vo] when it comes to investing, looking from a fresh perspective can make all the difference. It can provide what we call an unlock a realization that often reveals a better path forward. At wells fargo, its our expertise in finding this kind of insight that has lead us to become one of the largest investment and Wealth Management firms in the country. Discover how we can help find your unlock. [ mhow was work . G ] well, actually. Youre fired [ screaming ] lucy and i were invited to not work at the a. V. L. Anymore. No minions were going back to villainy. [ cheering ] so, youre villains now . Oh no no. No. No. No. No. [ laughing ] [ evil chuckles ] yow yes. Despicable me 3. Rated pg. After weeks of secrecy, Senate Republicans are expected to reveal their Health Care Reform bill tomorrow well check in with kayla tauche for more reporter the senate vote will likely happen next week the substance has been left out for them, and that has peaked frustration, even more members in the senates very closely held working group like senator mike lee of utah who took to his Facebook Page to respond to his constituents who had been calling about the bill its not being written by us. Its apparently being written by a small handful of staffers for members of the Republican Leadership in the senate so if you are frustrated by the lack of transparency in this process, i share your frustration. Add to the frustration of senator lee, senator bill cassidy who just this morning on tv said on msnbc, hes going to need time to read it senator bob corker, senator ted cruz and senator john mccain who last night made some snarky comments about the private process to reporters there are two questions now that remain, though one is whether the Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell actually wants to shepherd a bill that will pass or rather hes simply trying to meet a deadline they had previously talked about this morning on squawk box the House Majority leader was asked specifically what happens if the Senate Passes a bill that comes back to them and there are some provisions like some Medicaid Expansion changes that the house might not like heres what House Majority leader Kevin Mccarthy said to that you cant continue down the current path of where we are because of that, i know well come to an agreement together to solve this problem to actually lower premiums, give people greater choice and selection of where their health care goes one thing i say is to let the senate do our work, well do our work, at the end of the day, well come together with a final package that actually repeals the obamacare. Reporter as for the white houses involvement, the president got a full briefing yesterday from the legislative team though its unclear whether hes seen the bill text just yet. Carl thank you very much, kayla tausche. Cigma is holding the First Investor meeting this morning in new york we are joined by the ceo now, david, thank you for being with us. Good to be with you, thanks. If we see this tomorrow, what could happen next week if theres a vote well, we are at our investor day and walked through the ability to walk through the ability to go forward. That has been a successful recipe to grow at 11 over the last eight years as it relates to the bill, the bill is going after a portion of the market, specifically the medicaid and the individual marketplace. We dont really participate in the medicaid market. We participate at a small level in the individual market and we have been able to prove that when you engage with Health Care Professionals with individuals, some positive things happen. So were trying to help legislators understand there are bright spots in the market that they can look at as they evolve their legislation. All right so then help investors understand the relationship between whatever resolution we get on the hill and the guidance that you will give today and will give in the future. Sure. The important part, so were a Global Health service company. We operate a u. S. Commercial business, a u. S. Senior business and a u. S. Global business we put forth an update in the guidance this year that was raised 15 to 22 as a range we put out a longterm eps goal five years from now with 16 per share, which is about a 15 compound annual growth rate. And it underscores that it will grow successfully in the commercial business. U. S. Seniors business and very much so in our Global Business outside the u. S. So regardless of what happens relative to the next phase of u. S. Health care reform, were positioned to be able to engage our customers, work with employers, deliver for seniors as well as grow outside the United States. And that is what our investors are seeing from us, which is a pretty exciting position david, you said almost regardless, but put a finer point on it, if you will does it matter to you how much heart this version out of the senate ends up having . Well, in stepping back societally, me as a person have engaged actively in the Health Care Legislation thats an important part of our responsibility our companys position, though, where we have very small amount of our revenue in growth trajectory pinned against the socalled individual exchange business, think of 3 to 4 of the revenue. And next to none of the revenue pinned against the medicaid business we are not dependent on one sector of the overall portfolio to be able to win. Stepping back, though, its clear the legislation needs to evolve and what we have been able to prove is that if you can engage individuals into health care, and very importantly, connect them with Health Care Physicians and professionals and better quality and health care, then good things happen thats what we are helping regulators to understand as well. I want to tap you on the use of cash. It looks like you gave investors a lot of what they wanted in terms of the additional Share Buybacks. What does that mean for prospects around m a in light of the failures at humana and anthem cigna is there another shot at this and a more dealfriendly trump administration, would you be interested, for instance, in humana so what we did is we framed very clearly for our investors what our position is and stepped into 2017 with between 17 and 14 billion capital, depending on the buyback in share dividend or equivocally. Additionally, we will purchase 2 billion of the stock back this year. And this morning we indicated that we have been act