This announcement came as the company continues to fight allegations of racism and sexism which led Uber's founder, Travis Kalanick, to be ousted.
Khosrowshahi is currently 48 years old and is an Iranian American. He was the CEO of Expedia, a travel company, for more than a decade. A lot of experts and analysts say that they were surprised by the appointment as he beat HP Enterprise's chief executive, Meg Whitman, and General Electric's former CEO, Jeff Immelt, for the position.
The CEO of Expedia is known to be a critic of the US President Donald Trump. He even tweeted when Pres. Trump made his remarks about Charlottesville saying, "I keep on waiting for the joyous moment when our President rises to the expectations set by his office, yet he fails again and again."
Uber’s board is composed of eight members who met on the weekend to appoint the new CEO according to NYTimes. The list of candidates was very short with only three people – Khosrowshahi, Immelt, and Whitman.
Earlier on Sunday, the former CEO of GE, Immelt, announced via Twitter that he's no longer pursuing Uber's leadership position. He also expressed his immense respect for Uber's founders and the ride-hailing company itself.
Immelt resigned as GE's chief executive this year. He ran the industrial conglomerate for 16 long years. He's now 61 years old and there are talks that the reason why he backed down in his pursuit of being the CEO of Uber is because he wouldn’t be able to get enough votes from Uber's board.
Whitman, also 61 years old, said that she's planning to stay at HP. Last week, she tweeted that there’s still a lot to be done at HP.
According to Uber, they were on the lookout for an executive who's experienced and able to fill the empty seat that was left by the company's co-founder in June. The new CEO is also expected to restore the confidence within the company which is badly needed following the many months of chaos.
Since the appointment has been made, Khosrowshahi now has the task of reforming the company’s workplace culture following the accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination. He also has to recruit a new chief operating officer and a chief financial officer. What's more, numerous legal wrangles have to be dealt with since there’s still a dispute on intellectual property with Waymo, Google’s autonomous driving spinoff.
Kalanick resigned a few months back because he was given immense pressure from investors. They had enough leverage to demand Kalanick to resign as they owned almost half of Uber’s stock which accounted for approximately 40% of the voting shares.
