A person with knowledge of the situation told Reuters that Adam Neumann has put in a bid of more than $500 million to buy back WeWork, the office-sharing company he helped start and grew to be worth $47 billion before it went bankrupt. The person, who asked to remain anonymous because the talks were private, said it wasn’t clear how Neumann planned to get the money for his bid. WeWork became the most valuable U.S. startup, worth $47 billion, thanks to Neumann’s efforts to grow the company at the cost of making money. However, he was fired in 2019 after strange behavior came to light, which ruined what was supposed to be a big IPO.
According to Reuters, the founder Neumann is reportedly making efforts to repurchase the open workspace provider that had filed for bankruptcy in November, with backing from SoftBank. “WeWork is an extraordinary company and it’s no surprise we receive expressions of interest from third parties regularly,” a statement from WeWork said. “Our board and our advisors review those approaches in the ordinary course, to ensure we always act in the best long-term interests of the company,” it said.
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WeWork Eyes Restructuring Exit While Founder Considers Bid with Hedge Fund
WeWork remains committed to its restructuring plans, aiming to emerge from Chapter 11 in the second quarter as a financially robust and profitable company. Neumann’s lawyers wrote to WeWork last month to say that he was thinking about making a joint bid for the company with Third Point, Daniel Loeb’s hedge fund, and other investors. Reuters later learned that Third Point had “only preliminary conversations” with Neumann and his property company Flow, but that it had not made any financial promises.
WeWork canceled its IPO in 2019 after investors raised concerns about how much the company was worth and whether Neumann had too much power in the company’s management. As more people worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic and demand for office space dropped, the company lost a lot of money on its long-term lease responsibilities. Neumann’s bid was first written about in the Wall Street Journal earlier on Monday.
