From the Wall Street Journal front page:<p>>"As part of the deal, SoftBank, which already owns about a third of the company, is to buy nearly $1 billion of stock in WeWork’s parent from Mr. Neumann, who was forced out as chief executive after pushback from prospective investors scuttled the IPO. The Japanese conglomerate will also extend him roughly $500 million in credit to help repay a loan facility of the same amount led by JPMorgan, and also pay Mr. Neumann a $185 million consulting fee, the people said."[1]<p>A $185 million dollar consulting fee?<p>To put some perspective on this level of greed:<p>All of this is on top of the $700 million that Adan Neumann cashed out back in July ahead of the IPO announcement.[2]<p>The credit line not withstanding Adam Neumann now has $2 billion dollars in cash in his pocket while WeWork's valuation is now $8 billion and in need of emergency financing.<p>Adam Neumann has spent 90 million dollars on 6 properties 4 of them are in New York, 2 of them are actually short walking distance from each other in Manhattan.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-to-take-control-of-wework-11571746483" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-to-take-control-of-wew...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-co-founder-has-cashed-out-at-least-700-million-from-the-company-11563481395" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-co-founder-has-cashed-ou...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-founder-adam-neumanns-trove-of-pricey-properties-11570730254" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-founder-adam-neumanns-tr...</a>
Softbank is the Long-Term Capital Management of our decade.<p><a href="https://www.thebalance.com/long-term-capital-crisis-3306240" rel="nofollow">https://www.thebalance.com/long-term-capital-crisis-3306240</a>
So SoftBank is loading up We with huge amounts of debt to give it cash (vs a normal capital investment)? This smells like a leveraged buyout PE move.<p>The whole side deal on bailing out Adam on his mega personal loans with the banks is interesting. Reporting suggests he effectively defaulted on those loans based on previous developments with We but banks gave him some time to sort things out before calling in the loans.<p>This whole thing is going to make for an interesting book when the dust settles.