Artie Minson, president and chief operating officer of WeWork, speaks during the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, May 4, 2016.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Just two days after Adam Neumann’s exit at WeWork, the company’s new CEOs are taking significant steps to trim the fat in the hopes that it will help it get back on track for an IPO later this year.
To start, co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham plan to put Neumann’s private jet up for sale, Business Insider reported on Thursday. WeWork parent company the We Co. is said to have paid $60 million for the Gulfstream G650 last year. Since then, it has become an example of the company’s excessive spending.
With WeWork maintaining an IPO is still on the table, Minson and Gunningham are looking at several ways to cut the company’s ballooning losses, which reportedly includes layoffs and selling off three companies.
The We Co. will try to sell three companies it had acquired in the last two years, including event organizing platform Meetup, office management company Managed by Q and marketing company Conductor, according to The Information. The company has made a number of acquisitions in recent years to prove it resembles a technology company, including the purchase of real estate-focused software start-up Space IQ in July.
According to a separate report in The Information, WeWork could further reduce costs by slashing up to one-third of the company’s workers, or roughly 5,000 employees, as well as closing related businesses such as its private grade school and computer programming school.
WeWork moved to delay its IPO last week amid growing concerns around its corporate governance and lofty valuation. The company is still looking for cash to help prop up its IPO plans and has been in discussion with its biggest backer, SoftBank Group, about the possibility of an additional $1.5 billion investment, according to the Financial Times.
