Dara Khosrowshahi, who completed 41 transactions with a total value of $12.7B as Expedia's CEO, is following the same playbook at Uber of buying competitors
Bloomberg : Tweets: @gerritd , @ewarren , and @tsgiles Tweets: Gerrit De Vynck / @gerritd : Uber is trying to acquire its way to dominance in the food delivery industry. That's no surprise for people who know CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. w/ @livcarville and @lizette_chapman https://www.bloomberg.com/... Elizabeth Warren / @ewarren : We can't allow companies to use this crisis to boost their profits and consolidate their power while crushing workers who are already struggling to make ends meet. Rep. @AOC and I are calling for a moratorium on big mergers and Congress should pass it. https://www.theverge.com/... Tom Giles / @tsgiles : Khosrowshahi cultivated his dealmaker reputation when he ran Expedia Group Inc. for more than a decade; 41 transactions worth $12.7 billion. His strategy: roll up competitors, integrate them and reap the rewards of scale. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
When Uber's board hired Dara Khosrowshahi in 2017, profiles noted he had run Expedia for 12 years after serving as CFO at Barry Diller's IAC — and left $184.4M in unvested Expedia options on the table to take the job. Bloomberg now connects that résumé to strategy: 41 transactions worth $12.7B at Expedia, and the same buy-competitors approach being applied to food delivery at Uber.
The report lands in a charged moment — Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are explicitly citing crisis-driven consolidation and calling on Congress to impose a moratorium on big mergers, putting Uber's expansion directly in the path of that fight.
First-order effects
- Uber is pursuing acquisitions to consolidate the food delivery industry, making Khosrowshahi's Expedia dealmaking record the template for its current strategy.
- Warren and AOC are targeting exactly this behavior, urging a congressional moratorium on big mergers they say lets companies boost profits and crush struggling workers during the crisis.
Second-order effects
- Delivery rivals and potential sellers now face a buyer with a demonstrated appetite for consolidation, reshaping exit dynamics and pricing across the food delivery market.
- A public merger moratorium push from high-profile lawmakers raises the antitrust risk premium on any deal Uber attempts while the pandemic consolidation window is open.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, crisis periods become contested territory where platform roll-up strategies collide with political movements seeking to block them — with Congress's willingness to act on a moratorium deciding which force wins.
- The Khosrowshahi model suggests CEO-level dealmaking DNA travels between companies, making an executive's acquisition history a leading indicator investors and regulators can read before deals are announced.
The trend: Platform companies are buying their way to category dominance faster than antitrust politics can respond, and the pandemic is forcing that collision into the open.