Sep 4, 2019

WeWork CEO returns $5.9 million "trademark payment" to the company

Dan Primack

Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for WeWork

WeWork co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann has returned around $5.9 million worth of stock to the company, which he had originally received in exchange for the "we" trademarks, according to an amended IPO registration.

Why it matters: The payment was widely criticized, including by Axios, and was playing into a pre-IPO narrative that WeWork's corporate governance was broken.

The repayment was disclosed in an amended IPO filing from Wednesday morning.

  • The new filing also showed that WeWork has added Frances Frei, a Harvard Business School professor and former Uber executive, to its board. She is the company's first female director.
  • WeWork did not disclosed any new IPO details. Expectations are that we should get proposed pricing terms next week.

Go deeper

Dan Primack

WeWork reins in CEO to save IPO

Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

WeWork tried breathing new life into its IPO this morning with a new filing disclosing significant changes to voting structure, lockups, profit-sharing, and succession-planning.

Why it matters: Almost all of this is about reducing the power of co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann, who remains more controversial among many investors than WeWork's business model.

Go deeperArrowSep 13, 2019
Dan Primack

Behind new buzz over WeWork's IPO

Photo: Jonathan Brady/PA Images/Getty Images

There is lots of WeWork IPO buzz after the WSJ reported that the company may go public at a valuation at less than half its most recent private mark of $47 billion.

Driving the news: It also revealed that CEO Adam Neumann recently met in Tokyo with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to discuss either a cornerstone IPO investment or a private capital infusion that would allow WeWork to delay its IPO until next year.

Go deeperArrowSep 6, 2019
Dan Primack

WeWork picks up the pieces after ousting its CEO

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

When someone makes the inevitable WeWork movie, consider it a remake of the end of Quentin Tarantino's 1992 film Reservoir Dogs. Almost all of the major characters die. The exception is Mr. Pink, who seems to escape, but then we hear police sirens and his fate is left ambiguous.

Driving the news: Founder and CEO Adam Neumann was fired on Tuesday in a boardroom coup that he enabled by recently changing governance terms.

Go deeperArrowSep 25, 2019