Deflated ‘unicorn’ CEO Adam Neumann retreats after judge kills his attempt to buy back WeWork, which he drove into the ground five years ago

“For several months, we tried to work constructively with WeWork to create a strategy that would allow it to thrive,” Neumann said in a statement to the New York Times’ DealBook newsletter. “Instead, the company looks to be emerging from bankruptcy with a plan that appears unrealistic and unlikely to succeed.”

A New Jersey bankruptcy judge rejected Neumann’s efforts to buy back the beleaguered company earlier this month, which lost out to a $450 million bid led by longtime WeWork backer SoftBank and software provider Yardi Systems. The judge said that Neumann’s bid wasn’t feasible because it didn’t address $4 billion of debt on WeWork’s balance sheet. Under the approved deal, WeWork expects to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy by the end of the month.

“Over the past six months, we have worked extremely hard to develop a plan for a reorganized WeWork that is better capitalized, more operationally efficient, and positioned for continued investment in our products and services and a return to long-term growth,” WeWork CEO David Tolley said in a statement to The Real Deal last month.

WeWork’s bankruptcy litigation had focused on getting money back to creditors and wiping out the billions of dollars of debt weighing down WeWork’s balance sheet. Although WeWork included a noncompete clause in Neumann’s 2019 exit agreement that prevented him from competing with or soliciting the company, the clause expired last October, and Neumann had been aggressively pursuing a takeover bid, reportedly promising to beat any competing offer by 10%.  (Indeed, his $650 million bid was significantly higher than the $450 million proposal from Yardi and SoftBank that the bankruptcy judge favored earlier this month.)

Neumann, who cofounded WeWork as a single co-working space in Manhattan in 2010, captivated Wall Street throughout the late 2010s: first as the charismatic leader behind the buzzy company and later as the reckless CEO who partied hard and splashed cash on private jets and multimillion-dollar mansions as WeWork spiraled. He ultimately lost the confidence of the company’s board, which ousted him in 2019, before the company fell into bankruptcy.

WeWork’s business suffered after a disastrous attempted 2019 IPO, where investors balked at accounting methods it employed in regulatory filings and the company saw its value plummet from a high of $47 billion to just $270 million as of last August. (After it pulled out of the 2019 IPO, the company went public at a just $9 billion valuation through a SPAC in 2021—81% lower than its value just two years prior.) 

Since getting listed on the NYSE, though, WeWork’s share price has fallen over 99% to just 12 cents, and it’s been forced to lay off thousands of employees, terminate many of its leases, and declare bankruptcy. 

The company also suffered from poor timing: It signed tens of billions of dollars’ worth of office leases right before the pandemic, which tanked demand for in-person workspaces and left WeWork on the hook for costly payments on hundreds of properties that weren’t getting used nearly enough to be profitable.

Soon after WeWork collapsed, the company’s—and Neumann’s—respective falls from grace made international headlines and were adapted into the TV series WeCrashed, starring Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto, and a Hulu documentary starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashton Kutcher.

After the board pressured Neumann to leave WeWork, he was still worth $1.7 billion even as the company’s stock tanked, helped by a generous golden parachute deal valued at a reported $245 million. His moves raised eyebrows when he founded Flow, a $1 billion real estate startup backed by a whopping $350 million from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz that Neumann said would either “compete or partner” with WeWork. His $650 million takeover bid was an apparent effort to partner. With WeWork off the table, Neumann will likely turn to expanding Flow, which has reportedly been quietly working on multiuse developments in the Miami area.

WeWork declined to comment on this story.