Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been selected to be the CEO of Uber by the company’s board, a person close to the company has confirmed to Business Insider.
Uber has not publicly announced the news – apparently Khosrowshahi hasn’t officially accepted the offer. But a company representative did say that the board had “voted and will announce the decision to the employees first,” Recode’s Kara Swisher reported on Sunday.
Uber and Expedia didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Khosrowshahi’s appointment comes after embattled Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick was ousted as CEO of the world’s most valuable private company in June and as Uber has suffered an exodus of its top ranks amid 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 among the three, but he publicly backed out Sunday.
Another of the three candidates, HP Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, met with Uber's board over the weekend despite her publicly saying last month that she wouldn't take the job.
Khosrowshahi's involvement in the CEO search wasn't made known until Sunday, making him a dark horse in the race.
Expedia chairman Barry Diller told employees in an internal email 0n Monday that "nothing has been finalized" with regards to Khosrowshahi accepting the Uber CEO job, but noted that "having extensively discussed this with Dara I believe it is his intention to accept."
Khosrowshahi, 48, has been CEO of Expedia for 12 years. During that time, Expedia's revenue grew from $2.1 billion in 2005 to $8.7 billion in 2016. He turned Expedia into the biggest online travel agency in the US, owning the travel sites Hotels.com, Orbitz, Trivago, HomeAway, and 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.
Before running Expedia, he was the CFO at the media company IAC, which bought Expedia in 2003 then spun it out in 2005.
Khosrowshahi was born in Iran but immigrated 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 the investment bank Allen & Co.
He has a reputation as a good leader with a 93% approval rating on the job website Glassdoor,
He will need good leadership to help Uber recover from its tumultuous past and internal politics that have led to board members suing each other.
Here's the full letter from IAC/Interactive and Expedia chairman Barry Diller, which was filed with the SEC on Monday: