We would have suspended its public offering – TechCrunch

We Company, the parent company of WeWork, a short-term real estate development and management company, and other affiliates of We, have reportedly abandoned their initial public offering projects.

The company's public offering projects have been hampered by questions about its corporate governance and the ultimate value of a company that private investors once estimated at nearly $ 50 billion.

According to the Wall Street Journal, public investors were reluctant to face the dizzying valuation and dubious governance practices of the company led by CEO and co-founder Adam Neumann, who had announced for the first time that his offer on hold. .

In recent weeks, the company We took several steps to dispel the concerns of investors. The company has undone some particularly odious transactions with Neumann and has added new directors. It also aimed to limit Neumann's power in society.

Last week, the company amended its prospectus to include the appointment of an independent lead director. He also reduced the strength of the Class B and Class C shares so that Neumann did not have the 20-fold voting right of the other shareholders and removed his wife from the succession planning of the society.

Even these measures were apparently not enough to reassure Wall Street investors. Even attempts to reduce the valuation of the company to less than $ 10 billion could not attract enough interest from investors for the public offering. And the opacity of The We Company's reports and statistics probably did nothing to help the eyes of the investing public.

Now that The We Company is expected to come out of its public offering … and with Uber and Lyft underperforming in their first year as publicly traded companies, venture capitalists may be rethinking the dizzying valuations that they had granted the companies in their portfolio. Perhaps it is time to relearn the lesson that greed may not be really good.

We have solicited feedback from The We Company and will keep you informed of their response.

This story is growing.