I've used lots of the London WeWork sites since 2015, and carried on all through the depths of the pandemic and since.<p>For the last few years, I've been scratching my head how they are even staying open. Almost all of the centrally located ones around the City have been like ghost towns. Sometimes it seems there are only 2-3 people in the whole building, especially Monday and Friday.<p>In the last 3-4 months they are finally getting back to how they were. Struggling to get rooms, phone booths, hot desks etc and a bit of buzz is returning. I really think return to office is finally a thing after the summer.<p>My experience with their sales teams has been abysmal. I must have contacted them 5 times asking about upgrades, and I've never once had anybody follow up properly - e.g. email trails go dead, no availability for viewings etc.
I am reminded of this quote:
"If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem." -J. Paul Getty
WeWork's business model - arbitrage between long term liabilities (lease a lot of space from a building) and short term assets (sub lease portions of that space with short terms).<p>That model works poorly in good times, and never works in bad times.
Can someone explain why any one given lender wouldn't just say "fuck you, pay me"?<p>In the broad sense I understand - if paying would cause a going concern for the lendee, the le der would rather get <i>something</i> tether than nothing.<p>But in this case, the article even said the wework has cash on hand and a credit line. Why wouldn't any one given lender try to cash out in full and run for the doors, and leave all the other lenders who renegotiated holding the bag? Simply get a legal order forcing wework to pay in full while they still have the ability to (even if it meant paying YOU in full would make it so they wouldn't be able to pay OTHERS later).
I dislike this "negotiate by brinkmanship" approach intensely. Musk did it to landlords, suppliers of goods and service, lawyers.<p>It's not valid business practice. Wework should be put in the hands of an official receiver.<p>The whole "stick it to the man" vibe of one class of capitalist being a parasite on another kind of capitalist, and in the end it's shareholders and tax payers who suffer.