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It looks as if the end is nigh for WeWork, the flexible workspace provider that once commanded a valuation of $47bn.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the company plans to file for bankruptcy protection as early as next week.
It will be an ignominious end for a once-vaunted business seen as synonymous, in better days, with some of America’s hottest tech companies and the venture capital boom of the late 2010s.
The Journal reported that WeWork missed interest payments owed to its bondholders on 2 October – kicking off a 30-day grace period in which it needs to make the payments or be considered to have defaulted.
WeWork, whose stock market valuation has shrivelled to a mere £121m, said on Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with its bondholders giving it another seven days to negotiate before a default is triggered.
Luxurious lounges and free coffee and beer on tap
It is all a far cry from the days when, in 2019, WeWork was being feted as one of the hottest start-ups around.
The business was founded in New York in 2010 by Adam Neumann, an Israeli entrepreneur, who had tapped into a post financial crisis zeitgeist of more collaborative working.
He summed this up in a 2011 interview with the New York Daily News in which he said: “The 1990s and early 2000s were the ‘I’ decade. iPhone, the iPod – everything was about me. Look where that got us? In a terrible recession.
“The next decade is the ‘We’ decade, where collaboration is the future of innovation.”
“This generation watched big companies crumble. They have seen regimes overthrown by Facebook pages. If you look closely, we’re already in a revolution. We want to make it positive.”
To that end, WeWork targeted young workers, particularly in the tech sector, kitting out its light, airy, serviced workspaces with luxurious lounges and free coffee and beer on…
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