Sandeep Mathrani succeeds Marcelo Claure as WeWork chairman

Co-working firm also appoints Saurabh Jalan, a partner at SoftBank, to its board

WeWork's Sandeep Mathrani (WeWork, iStock)
WeWork's Sandeep Mathrani (WeWork, iStock)

WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani will now take an additional role at the co-working company.

The company announced Tuesday that Mathrani will become WeWork’s chairman, a position held by Marcelo Claure until he left his roles at WeWork and Softbank after a reported disagreement over compensation. Claure was said to be seeking $2 billion from the Japanese investment company.

WeWork also appointed Saurabh Jalan, a partner at SoftBank Group, to WeWork’s board, filling a seat that had been held by Claure. Jalan oversees SoftBank’s stakes in WeWork, T-Mobile US, and Deutsche Telekom AG, among other companies.

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Mathrani, the former CEO of the retail giant GGP, was appointed CEO of WeWork in February 2020. Mathrani helped take the co-working company public through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, last year.

Claure, who led SoftBank’s Latin American investment fund, was at odds with SoftBank over his responsibilities in addition to his compensation, a person familiar with the matter previously told The Real Deal. The person said the scope of assets that Claure oversaw was shrinking and that had become a point of contention.

Claure worked closely with SoftBank chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son, who tapped him to fix WeWork’s issues upon providing a golden parachute to the co-working company’s co-founder Adam Neumann to step down as CEO in 2019.

​​Claure had been chief operating officer of the Japanese investment company since 2018 after leading Sprint. He became executive chairman of WeWork in 2019.