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WeWork Files for Bankruptcy
Once valued at $47 billion, the coworking company has finally collapsed.
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The Story: WeWork, the world’s largest coworking company once valued at almost $50 billion, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court.
The collapse of WeWork began back in 2019 when the company’s debt problem became abundantly apparent. That collapse looks to finally be over, and as the dust settles, more than just WeWork has been seriously harmed by the bankruptcy filing.
That list includes SoftBank, who owns more than 70% of the coworking company, the office rental market at-large, and other late-stage startups struggling to stay afloat right now.
According to real estate company JLL, more than 20% of all office spaces are currently vacant. And the loss of WeWork only exacerbates that problem.
CNN’s Nathaniel Meyersohn reports that, “The loss of WeWork will increase vacancies, might lower rent for tenants, meaning less cash for some landlords already struggling to make debt payments in a high interest rate environment… In the worst case scenario, it may prompt landlord defaults on loans or mortgages, which could more broadly affect the banking system and hit city tax revenues even further.”
In short, the reverberations of WeWork’s crash will be felt across multiple industries.
Yesterday, SoftBank reported $6.2 billion in net losses, the fourth quarter in a row of negative returns for the Japan-based investment firm. This comes as a surprise as analysts from the firm were expecting to report a net profit of over $1 billion, according to S&P Capital IQ.
Expert Take: Jon Keidan, founder and managing partner of Torch Capital, believes WeWork is a cautionary tale: “I think this is a warning. This is sort of the final nail that you can’t just figure these things out. If you set up a company the wrong way—overvalued, overcapitalized, overindebted—it will come down to haunt you, no matter what… and it will probably be extremely painful.”
Keidan is still optimistic about the coworking model, however. He says, “I still think there is a space for coworking. I actually think Adam’s original idea was spot on. It was just how it was capitalized and grown recklessly; signing leases with abandon, without any real analysis… coworking can work if it’s done in a disciplined way.”
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