Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been selected to be the CEO of Uber by the company’s board, a source close to the company has confirmed to Business Insider.
Uber has not yet publicly announced the news – apparently Khosrowshahi hasn’t officially accepted the offer. But a spokesperson did say, “The Board has voted and will announce the decision to the employees first,” reports Recode’s Kara Swisher.
Khosrowshahi’s appointment comes after embattled Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick was ousted as the CEO of the world’s most valuable private company in June, and as Uber has suffered an exodus of its top ranks amidst mounting public scandals.
The board had narrowed the CEO search down to three people, with different factions backing different candidates. Former GE CEO Jeff Immelt was a top candidate, but he publicly backed out on Sunday.
Another of the three candidates, HP CEO Meg Whitman, met with Uber’s board over the weekend despite her publicly saying she wouldn’t take the job last month.
Khosrowshahi’s involvement in the CEO search wasn’t made known until Sunday, making him a dark horse in the race.
Khosrowshahi, 48, has been CEO of Expedia for 12 years and during that time Expedia’s revenues grew from $2.1 billion in in 2005 to $8.7 billion in 2016. He turned Expedia into the biggest online travel agency in the US, owning travel sites like Hotels.com, Orbitz, Trivago, HomeAway, Travelocity as well as sites for vacation rentals, car rentals and so on. When the 2008 financial meltdown hit the company hard, he reorganized and doubled down on technology.
Prior to running Expedia, he was the CFO at IAC. IAC bought Expedia in 2003, then spun it out in 2005.
Khosrowshahi was born in Iran but came to the US as a kid, grew up in New York State and is a US citizen. He has a degree in electrical engineering and before landing at IAC, he went into finance, working for investment bank Allen & Co.
He has a reputation as a good leader, according to ratings on Glassdoor,with a 93% approval rating.
He will need good leadership to help Uber recover from its tumultuous past that created so much division, board members were suing each other.
Uber and Expedia couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
As reported by Business Insider