The co-working company’s trading debut follows a failed I.P.O., a pandemic and more.
After two years, a failed I.P.O., a plunging valuation and a pandemic that reset many workers’ relationships with the office, the co-working company WeWork will begin a new life today as a publicly traded company. WeWork argues it’s a better company now. It has renegotiated or exited some 500 leases this year, saving over $400 million, according to its C.E.O., Sandeep Mathrani. And its deal to go public via a merger with a SPAC, BowX, will provide $1.3 billion in new capital. It has significantly dialed back the ambitions of Adam Neumann, a founder and former C.E.O., who pitched WeWork as the future of… well, a lot of things. He spooked many inside and outside the company with what they viewed as reckless management before his ouster. But WeWork’s future remains murky. It is still burning cash as customers drop their membership fees in an era of remote working. SoftBank, the company’s biggest backer, faces an uphill climb just to break even on its multibillion-dollar investment. Once valued at $47 billion, WeWork is expected to trade at a market cap of around $8 billion. “I made a wrong decision,” Masa Son, SoftBank’s chief, said last year. And Neumann hasn’t gone away. He and WeWork’s other founder, Miguel McKelvey, are hosting a party this morning to celebrate the company going public, DealBook has confirmed. Neumann still owns an 11 percent stake in WeWork, and can observe board meetings starting next year. That raises questions about whether WeWork can ever escape his shadow. Donald Trump turns to a SPAC to back his media venture. The former president said he was teaming up with Digital World Acquisition Group to form a publicly traded media group to rival the “liberal media consortium.” Digital World is led by Patrick Orlando, a former Deutsche Bank executive. Shares in Evergrande plunge after a failed stake sale. The embattled Chinese real estate giant’s stock fell more than 13 percent after it announced the end of its efforts to sell part of its property services business. The company is now days away from officially declaring default. A twist in the Fed’s trading scandal. The central bank’s ethics office warned the Fed chair, Jay Powell, and regional bank presidents in March 2020 against trading in their personal accounts, though several later did, The Times’s Jeanna Smialek reports. Amazon faces another unionization movement. Workers at a Staten Island warehouse that was scrutinized over its workplace conditions said they would formally begin a labor organization drive. It comes after a similar campaign in Alabama failed, though Amazon was accused of improperly influencing the vote. Netflix workers log off in protest. Dozens of employees walked out of a company office in Los Angeles, while others ended work early, to voice their displeasure at Dave Chappelle’s recent comedy special, which they said promoted bigotry against transgender people. PayPal has offered to buy Pinterest in a deal valued around $45 billion, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. If completed, the takeover would be the largest in the consumer internet industry over the past decade, topping Microsoft’s $26.
