The rationale for creating WeWork, the eco-friendly serviced workspace provider, was simple as co-founder Adam Neumann explained to the New York Daily News.
‘During the economic crises, there were these empty buildings and these people freelancing or starting companies. I knew there was a way to match the two. What separates us, though, is community.’ It wasn’t a bad idea since the company was recently valued at $20 billion. The first WeWork location was established in New York’s fashionable SoHo district (above) in 2010. Only four years later, Wikipedia notes that WeWork was the ‘fastest growing lessee of new office space in New York’. The company currently manages office space in 23 cities across the United States and in 21 other countries including China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, France, Germany and the UK.
WeWork’s growth has been little short of stratospheric, and investors have included heavyweight financial names such as JP Morgan. T. Rowe Price, Goldman, Wellington Management and Softbank. As Bloomberg reports, WeWork is about to repeat its success in New York and other cities by becoming the largest private lessee of office space in London. However, some old-school property developers are predicting that WeWork’s break-neck expansion is ill-timed.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 8, 2017.
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