Coverage: Uber picks Expedia CEO as its new leader

Uber selected Dara Khosrowshahi, who leads online travel company Expedia, to be chief executive, capping a contentious search process as the ride-hailing company seeks to move past a turbulent period.

Mike Isaac of The New York Times had the news:

Mr. Khosrowshahi emerged as the leading C.E.O. candidate over a weekend of Uber board meetings with three finalists, according to two people with knowledge of the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details were confidential.

One finalist, Jeffrey R. Immelt, the former chief of General Electric, withdrew on Sundaywhen it became clear that he did not enough have support, said two people familiar with the process. The board was leaning toward Meg Whitman, the chief of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the people said. Matters changed over the course of Sunday afternoon and the board decided on Mr. Khosrowshahi.

Choosing Mr. Khosrowshahi is crucial to returning stability to Uber, the world’s biggest ride-hailing company, which has been without a leader since its co-founder, Travis Kalanick, stepped down from the C.E.O. job under pressure on June 20. Under Mr. Kalanick, Uber changed the transportation landscape by offering people the ability to summon a ride through an app, and the privately held company swelled to a nearly $70 billion colossus.

But Uber’s prospects became murkier this year when the company was pummeled by scandal after scandal, including sexual harassment accusations in the workplace, a Department of Justice criminal investigation into some of its methods, and an intellectual property dispute with a self-driving car rival. While Uber’s business continued to grow, Mr. Kalanick’s management style faced scrutiny and investors mutinied against him.

Kara Swisher of Recode reports that he’s likely to take the job:

Still, most expect him to take it and he appears to be the one person dueling factions of the board can agree on. Unknown until now, Khosrowshahi was the third candidate — after Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman and former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt.

Immelt dropped out of the running this morning, with sources close to his thinking calling the process totally “dysfunctional.” Cue sources close to Whitman to say that very soon. Both are accurate.

In keeping with the cup full of crazy modus operandi, about 30 minutes ago, in a statement, an Uber board spokesperson said: “The Board has voted and will announce the decision to the employees first.”

Well, it’s Khosrowshahi, if he says yes, that is — so now we can all get back to the season finale of Game of Thrones.

Sean O’Kane of The Verge reported that the new CEO will need to overcome the company’s problems:

Kalanick has been the public face of Uber since its inception, and he’s remained CEO through a number of speed bumps and full-blown scandals. But the company’s exploding success on his watch — on top of the fact that he is Uber’s biggest shareholder and had close ties to the company’s board members, giving him sway on board votes — was enough to keep him buckled into the position during that turbulence.

It wasn’t until a group of major Uber investors demanded his resignation in June that the pugnacious CEO finally stepped down. Two of those people — venture capitalists at the investment firm Benchmark — gave Kalanick a letter titled “Moving Uber Forward” while he was in Chicago interviewing candidates to fill Uber’s numerous executive vacancies, according to a June report in the New York Times.

The letter was the culmination of a pressure that had been building since the beginning of 2017. It started when protests sprung up around the United States in response to Donald Trump’s executive order banning refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries. In particular, a protest at John F. Kennedy International airport in New York City saw the New York Taxi Workers alliance call on drivers to temporarily suspend passenger pickups in solidarity. Uber continued to serve the airport, and some 200,000 users around the world responded by deleting the app from their phones.