Quantcast
Channel: Wall Street
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 5364

Former Twitter CEO calls out WeWork CEO Adam Neumann amid the company's IPO fiasco: ‘This is not the way everybody behaves’

$
0
0

Adam Neumann / WeWork

The office co-working company once valued at $47 billion, WeWork, filed an S-1 for its initial public offering in mid-August.

One month later and WeWork's parent company  is said to have been mulling going public with a valuation in the $10 to $12 billion range. It's placed its IPO on pause — it was originally supposed to go public this month, but is now said to be aiming for the end of the year

The story of what happened is complex and still ongoing, but one particular thread stands out from the last month of WeWork news: CEO Adam Neumann's repeated self-dealing while leading the company.

Adam Neumann speaks onstage during WeWork Presents Second Annual Creator Global Finals at Microsoft Theater on January 9, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.

In the company's S-1, it was revealed that Neumann owns several properties that WeWork leases from him, and that he sold the rights to the word "We" to WeWork (while serving as CEO) for nearly $6 million. He has since given back the money for the naming rights, and committed to giving his profits from the related real-estate deals back to the company. 

WeWork and Neumann have received plenty of criticism in the last month as the company readies to go public, including from New York University's Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway, the best-selling author and  tech-industry pundit, who deemed the company, "WeWTF" after it filed its S-1.

But few have been as scathing as former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was in a Wall Street Journal profile of Neuman published on Wednesday by reporter Eliot Brown.

Read more:The history of WeWork's meteoric valuation rise — and fall

"This is not the way everybody behaves," Costolo told the WSJ. "The degree of self-dealing in the S-1 is so egregious, and it comes at a time when you've got regulators and politicians and folks across the country looking out at Silicon Valley and wondering if there's the appropriate level of self-awareness."

WeWork representatives declined to comment on Costolo's statements, and cited a quiet period as the company prepares to go public.

SEE ALSO: WeWork could cut its valuation in half to about $20 billion after intense skepticism of its business and CEO — and it might delay its IPO

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch SpaceX's 'most difficult launch ever'


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 5364

Trending Articles



<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>