WeWork seeks bankruptcy protection, a stunning fall for a firm once valued at close to $50 billion

NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — WeWork has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a stunning fall for the office sharing company once seen as a Wall Street darling that promised to upend the way people went to work around the world.

In a late Monday announcement, WeWork said it entered into a restructuring support agreement with stakeholders to “drastically reduce” the company’s debt while further evaluating WeWork’s commercial office lease portfolio.

WeWork is requesting the “ability to reject the leases of certain locations,” which the company says are largely non-operational, as part of the filing. Specific estimates of total impacted locations were not disclosed Monday, but all affected members have received advanced notice, the company said.

“Now is the time for us to pull the future forward by aggressively addressing our legacy leases and dramatically improving our balance sheet,” WeWork CEO David Tolley said in a prepared statement. “We defined a new category of working, and these steps will enable us to remain the global leader in flexible work.”

The specter of bankruptcy has hovered over WeWork for some time. In August, the New York company sounded the alarm over its ability to remain in business. But cracks had begun to emerge several years ago, not long after the company was valued as high as $47 billion.

WeWork is paying the price for aggressive expansion in its early years. The company went public in October 2021 after its first attempt to do so two years earlier collapsed spectacularly. The debacle led to the ouster of founder and CEO Adam Neumann, whose erratic behavior and exorbitant spending spooked early investors.

Japan’s SoftBank stepped in to keep WeWork afloat, acquiring majority control over the company.

In September, when WeWork announced plans to renegotiate nearly all of its leases, Tolley noted that the company’s lease liabilities accounted for more than two-thirds of its operating expenses for the second quarter of this year — remaining “too high” and “dramatically out of step with current market conditions.”

At the time, WeWork also said it could exit more underperforming locations. As of June 30, the latest date with property numbers disclosed in securities filings, WeWork had 777 locations in 39 countries.

Beyond real estate costs, WeWork has pointed to increased member churn and other financial losses. In August, the company said that its ability to stay in operation was contingent upon improving its liquidity and profitability overall in the next year.