- WeWork has a new plan to get out of bankruptcy — and it doesn’t involve Adam Neumann.
- Neumann is seeking to acquire the company he created for more than $500 million.
- “We anticipate there will be robust objections to confirming this plan,” a Flow attorney told BI.
WeWork has a new plan to get out of bankruptcy — and it doesn’t involve Adam Neumann, who wants to acquire the flexible office provider he created.
WeWork announced Monday that it has raised $450 million in equity funding, which it could use to emerge from Chapter 11. The company also said it has a plan in place to “eliminate all of its $4 billion of outstanding, prepetition debt obligations.”
A vote on the plan — which has support from the owners of most of WeWork’s debt — is scheduled for May 30, according to Bloomberg.
The majority of the funding — $337 million, to be exact — would come from Cupar Grimmond, and SoftBank would still own a stake in the company, according to the outlet.
But Neumann, who has recently expressed interest in purchasing WeWork, doesn’t plan to go down without a fight. A representative for Neumann told Business Insider that he has submitted a bid of about $650 million.
“After misleading the court for weeks, WeWork finally admitted it is trying to sell the company to a group led by Yardi for far less than we are continuing to propose,” Susheel Kirpalani, an attorney for Neumann’s new real estate startup Flow Global, told Business Insider in a statement, adding, “so we anticipate there will be robust objections to confirming this plan.”
WeWork parted with Neumann five years ago following its failed IPO. The company filed for bankruptcy in November 2023 after the pandemic dealt a massive blow to its business model.
Monday, April 29, 2024: This article has been updated with a comment from Neumann’s representative.