Uber's negotiations to buy Deliveroo halted
Negotiations for Uber’s takeover of Deliveroo have halted as both companies cannot agree on the price of the UK food delivery app.
The businesses are “miles apart” on a valuation for Deliveroo, the Financial Times reported, as Uber has offered less than $2bn while Deliveroo refuses to accept any less than £4bn.
One person close to Deliveroo said the company was attempting to raise $400m at a valuation of $4bn. This fundraising move was reported over the weekend by Sky News.
Deliveroo’s main investors, which include Fidelity and T Rowe Price, are seeking an investment or partnership rather than a full sale.
It was reported in September that Uber had kicked off talks to buy Deliveroo as it is one of the main rivals of its own food delivery service, Uber Eats.
Deliveroo’s revenues more than doubled to £277m in 2017 but losses widened by 43% to £185m after it spent money recruiting 300 engineers, launching in new cities and opening kitchens.
CAN'T CATCH A BREAK
Aside from not being able to reach an agreement with Deliveroo, Uber has also had to deal with more issues such as the £385,000 fine announced on Tuesday from the Information Commissioner's Office over some data protection failings in 2016.
The ICO investigated a series of "avoidable" data security flaws from Uber that allowed the personal details of around 2.7m UK customers, including full names, email addresses and phone numbers, to be accessed and downloaded by attackers from a cloud-based storage system operated by Uber’s US parent company.
Uber customers that were affected were not told about the incident for more than a year, the ICO noted. Instead, the company tried to destroy the downloaded data by paying the attackers $100,000.