Ending its search for a new CEO, Board of Directors at Uber have finally selected Expedia’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi as Uber’s Chief Executive Officer. Uber has not declared anything regarding the next CEO yet but according to TechCrunch’s source, you can expect Khosrowshahi to be the one.
Update (August 30, 2017): It is confirmed! Dara Khosrowshahi, the former Expedia’s CEO, is Uber’s new CEO.
Recode, being the first to report, has reported that Uber wants Khosrowshahi to be its next CEO but have not officially asked him yet. Expedia is a travel company who also claims to be “one of the largest online travel companies in the world.” Under his supervision, Expedia has achieved greater heights but it is definitely going to be a challenge for him to lead Uber as CEO, however, several Uber investors told TechCrunch that he has the right operational experience to get the job done.
Uber shortlisted three candidates- Meg Whitman (Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO), Jeff Immelt (former General Electric CEO), and Dara Khosrowshahi (Expedia CEO). Both Meg Whitman and Jeff Immelt publicly tweeted that they are not interested, however, according to some reports that were published on Sunday, Whitman was in the race anyway.
Uber has gone through a lot with all the lawsuits since Travis Kalanick left Uber as CEO in June. One of the board member Benchmark Capital sued former CEO wanting Kalanick off the board for not disclosing material information regarding company’s problems. Then former board member Shervin Pishevar accused Benchmark of revealing confidential information.
An Uber board spokesperson has said, “The Board has voted and will announce the decision to the employees first.” Well, it looks like the company is waiting for Dara Khosrowshahi to say yes. If he says yes then he will have a lot to start with as everything at Uber is messed up. He will have to make Uber great again and to go down that path, the first job he should be doing is to overcome company’s notoriously toxic corporate culture and to implement all the recommendations that former US Attorney General Eric Holder has made after months of his investigation into company’s culture and practices in order to fix the company’s ethics and leadership troubles.