A newspaper advertisement for an Uber Technologies Inc. stock sale was juxtaposed on Wednesday with a report that the ride-service provider had covered up a data hack — something of a metaphor for Uber, a company with boundless investor interest, but whose penchant for rule-breaking has led to a series of scandals.
The stock sale advertised in the New York Times will enable Uber investors to sell their shares to Japanese investor SoftBank, a critical deal for the company whose problems included building software to spy on competitors and to evade regulators and being investigated in Asia for paying bribes.
Uber on Tuesday said that it had paid hackers $100,000 to destroy data on more than 57 million customers and drivers that was stolen from the company — and that it was decided under the previous CEO Travis Kalanick not to report the matter to victims or authorities. Uber was first hacked in October 2016 and discovered the data breach the following month.
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