Dara Khosrowshahi will take over as chief of ride-hail company<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n

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Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Immelt were finalists for the job<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

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(Bloomberg) – Uber Technologies Inc.\u00a0will appoint\u00a0Expedia Inc.\u2019s Dara Khosrowshahi to run the global ride-hailing Leviathan, two people familiar with the matter said. He\u2019ll succeed co-founder Travis Kalanick, who led the firm to $20 billion in annual bookings before scandals\u00a0forced\u00a0him out.<\/p>\n

In hiring Expedia\u2019s chief executive officer, Uber will land a seasoned deal-maker and an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, who\u2019s accustomed to sparring with one of his new company\u2019s biggest rivals, Alphabet Inc. While a spokeswoman for Uber directors confirmed that they\u2019ve chosen a CEO, she declined to name the person, saying the board would inform employees first. Expedia didn\u2019t immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Khosrowshahi will face a number of hurdles as Uber — which has raised more than $15 billion from private investors — navigates its way toward a still-unscheduled initial public offering. The new top executive must grapple with the company\u2019s persistent losses, a high-stakes trade secrets suit filed by\u00a0Alphabet\u2019s Waymo, a tarnished brand and low morale among Uber\u2019s more than 15,000 global employees.<\/p>\n

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Uber\u2019s board met over the weekend for the last round of interviews with candidates and to discuss options, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations were private.\u00a0Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.\u00a0CEO Meg Whitman and\u00a0General Electric Co.\u00a0Chairman Jeffrey Immelt were under consideration for the job.<\/p>\n

The board ultimately went with a dark horse. Khosrowshahi hadn\u2019t been named publicly as a finalist during a CEO search that was plagued by leaks, boardroom infighting and a lawsuit involving two directors. He has accepted the position, people familiar with the discussions said.<\/p>\n

Khosrowshahi, 48, is an Iran-born American who graduated from Brown University with an engineering degree. He had a stint in investment banking at Allen & Co. before joining with billionaire Barry Diller at IAC during the dot-com boom. Khosrowshahi led an acquisition binge in online travel, expanding IAC\u2019s Expedia with takeovers of Orbitz and HomeAway.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also one of the technology industry\u2019s most outspoken CEOs in opposition to some of President Trump\u2019s policies. He railed against the immigration ban and mocked Trump on Twitter as repeatedly failing to \u201crise to the expectations of his office\u201d after the president\u2019s response to protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. Uber\u2019s long year of controversies began in January when Kalanick tried to justify his position on a Trump business council before\u00a0ultimately resigning\u00a0that post after customers staged a boycott.<\/p>\n

Khosrowshahi was effective at marrying disparate businesses across Expedia, many brought together through acquisitions, said Woody Marshall, an investor in the online travel industry who has known Khosrowshahi since they were kids. \u201cHe\u2019s been able to leverage technology in a thoughtful way,\u201d said Marshall, a general partner at venture capital firm TCV, which isn\u2019t an Uber investor. \u201cHe\u2019s the real deal. He\u2019s not bigger than life in terms of his public appearance or public personality. He\u2019s bigger than life in terms of culture and values.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Kalanick, Uber grew into a massive global business. In the second quarter of 2017, the company lost $645 million on $1.75 billion in net revenue. During Kalanick\u2019s nearly seven-year stint, the San Francisco-based startup achieved a $69 billion valuation, struck partnerships with major auto manufacturers, took a sizable stake in its\u00a0biggest global competitor\u00a0and established itself as the premier ride-hailing business in most of the developed world. Kalanick earned a sort of legendary Silicon Valley status, elbowing into the ranks of founders like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.<\/p>\n

However, Kalanick, 41, cultivated a brash reputation and played a central role in many of the company\u2019s controversies. He was\u00a0caught on tape\u00a0arguing with an Uber driver over pay and was tied to the company\u2019s\u00a0mishandling\u00a0of medical records for an Indian woman who had been raped by an Uber driver. Kalanick helped author\u00a0the company\u2019s cultural values, which consultants described as a way to justify bad behavior in the office. He also drove the acquisition of the autonomous trucking startup Otto for $680 million in stock, which led to a lawsuit\u00a0from Alphabet.<\/p>\n

Khosrowshahi has experience jousting with Alphabet\u2019s Google. Expedia was among Google\u2019s top search advertisers. But as Google began to promote more of its own travel services, Expedia was among the companies that formally opposed the search giant\u2019s dominance in a European Union antitrust case. \u201cWe\u2019re comfortably uncomfortable as it relates to Google,\u201d Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg in July.<\/p>\n

Uber\u2019s search for a CEO started as a bid to find Kalanick \u201cleadership help,\u201d a process that began in March after Bloomberg published a video of Kalanick\u2019s verbal altercation with a driver. It shifted focus to the top job after Kalanick\u2019s resignation on June 20. Uber\u2019s other leadership needs include heads of finance and marketing, a general counsel and more independent board members, including a chairman. Uber is being led by a 14-person management committee alongside the eight-member board until the new CEO starts.<\/p>\n

HPE\u2019s Whitman gained support from some Uber board members for the CEO role after\u00a0presenting her vision\u00a0for the company on Saturday. She had previously denied that she would take the job. Whitman had been an informal adviser over the years to Kalanick and Ryan Graves, the company\u2019s longest-running executive who\u2019s set to depart next month but will remain on the board. Benchmark, Uber\u2019s largest venture capital backer, was a fan of Whitman. But Kalanick wanted someone willing to bring him back as a partner, something she was unlikely to do, people familiar with the matter said. Kalanick threw his weight behind GE\u2019s Immelt, who was a serious contender but failed to win sufficient support from the board. He withdrew his name Sunday morning in a Twitter post.<\/p>\n

The CEO search had been further complicated by an ongoing legal fight between Kalanick and Benchmark. The VC firm accused the former CEO of fraud and asked a Delaware Chancery Court to strip him of control over three board seats, effectively removing him from the board. The courtroom squabble is a sticking point in a potential investment from SoftBank Group Corp., Didi Chuxing and others that would\u00a0inject\u00a0at least $1 billion into Uber and allow a large contingent of shareholders to cash out.<\/p>\n

In the end, the board voted unanimously for Khosrowshahi, a person familiar with the matter said. Investors seem to like him. Expedia\u2019s stock is up 32 percent this year, built partly on enthusiasm for the company\u2019s home-rental competitor to Airbnb Inc. At Uber, Khosrowshahi will be tasked with installing the same sort of confidence in shareholders and whipping the business into shape for an IPO. That will involve fixing a raft of issues that have been festering inside the company for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dara Khosrowshahi will take over as chief of ride-hail company Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Immelt were finalists for the job   (Bloomberg) – Uber Technologies Inc.\u00a0will appoint\u00a0Expedia Inc.\u2019s Dara Khosrowshahi to run the global ride-hailing Leviathan, two people familiar with the matter said. He\u2019ll succeed co-founder Travis Kalanick, who led the firm to $20 billion…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,10,47,64],"tags":[40,43,42],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3136,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions\/3136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}