The WeWork founder Adam Neumann has shelved his bid to acquire the bankrupt shared office space provider.
It emerged earlier this year that Neumann, who was ousted from the business in 2019 following a botched attempt to take it public on the stock market, was seeking to buy the business. His new real estate venture, Flow Global, submitted a bid of more than $500m to take over WeWork and its assets.
On Tuesday morning, however, Neumann confirmed that Flow was walking away from his dream to take back control of the firm.
“For several months, we tried to work constructively with WeWork to create a strategy that would allow it to thrive,” he told DealBook. “Instead, the company looks to be emerging from bankruptcy with a plan that appears unrealistic and unlikely to succeed.”
WeWork, with over $13bn in long-term leases, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last November in order to renegotiate these agreements. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At its peak, the company had been valued at $47bn as investors including the Japanese multinational SoftBank lined up to back it. As it prepared to go public in 2019, however, analysts gave it a far lower valuation.
After it eventually went public, in 2021, its market valuation tumbled to less than $50m.
Neumann, 45, stepped down from WeWork in 2019 after its initial failure to go public, and criticism of the firm’s internal culture on his watch. He landed on his feet, however, launching Flow – a real estate venture which raised $350m from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in 2022.
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Reuters contributed reporting