Adam Neumann wants to buy back WeWork for $500M

Five years after Adam Neumann was booted from WeWork and months after the coworking firm filed for bankruptcy, the co-founder wants to buy it back.

Neumann, former CEO of the New York-based coworking company, has submitted an offer to buy the bankrupt company for more than $500 million, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified sources.

It wasn’t clear how Neumann would pay for the purchase, the people familiar with the matter said.

Neumann has been struggling to regain control of WeWork after he was ousted by the board in 2019. His lawyers sent a letter to WeWork’s advisers last month, saying he was hooking up with Dan Loeb’s Third Point hedge fund and other investors in exploring a bid for the company.

Third Point isn’t part of Neumann’s bid, the unidentified sources told the WSJ on Monday.

A fund spokeswoman previously said the hedge fund hadn’t made a commitment to participate in any transaction and had only preliminary conversations with Flow Global, Neumann’s real-estate company.

“Two weeks ago, a coalition of half a dozen financing partners — whose identities are known to WeWork and its advisors — submitted a potential bid for substantially more than The Wall Street Journal reported without contacting us,” a Flow spokesperson said in a comment after publication.

WeWork filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in November, citing billions in losses, but is aiming to emerge from bankruptcy in the second quarter as a “financially strong and profitable company,” an unidentified company spokesman said.

“As we’ve said previously, WeWork is an extraordinary company and it’s no surprise we receive expressions of interest from third parties on a regular basis,” the WeWork spokesman said. “Our board and our advisers review those approaches in the ordinary course, to ensure we always act in the best long-term interests of the company.”

More than five years ago, WeWork was the highest-flying firm in real estate, once valued at $47 billion. A year ago, the company announced a loss of $2.3 billion.

Driven by the charismatic but chaotic Neumann, the firm spent the 2010s signing leases as fast as it could draw up documents. Before long it controlled more office space than anyone in New York City — and was making workplaces hip for the first time ever.

And in the wake of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, WeWork has left a trail of wreckage across New York City, as abandoned landlords deal with its empty offices, and has had a hard time paying millions of dollars it owes in back rent.

The beleaguered company has filed motions to keep at least seven of its leases across the U.S. and Canada, including an 87,000-square-foot lease in L.A.’s Century City, but has rejected 80 of its leases across the globe, including 92,000 square feet at the Gas Company Tower in Downtown L.A. 

— Dana Bartholomew

This story has been updated to include a statement from a Flow spokesperson.

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