DealBook Briefing: What WeWork Faces After Its C.E.O. Steps Down

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/business/dealbook/wework-ceo-adam-neumann.html

Version 0 of 1.

Good Wednesday morning. (Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

After the news yesterday that Adam Neumann had stepped down as the co-working company’s C.E.O. following a near-revolt from some of his own directors, WeWork must pick up the pieces and restore confidence in its business. It won’t be easy.

Mr. Neumann agreed to relinquish his C.E.O. title and become nonexecutive chairman, the NYT scooped yesterday. He also agreed to reduce the voting power of his shares to three-to-one, from 10-to-one. The company appointed two current executives, Sebastian Gunningham and Artie Minson, as co-C.E.O.s.

It’s a remarkable end to Mr. Neumann’s run. His charisma turned WeWork into a force in real estate with a meteoric growth rate. But his unpredictability and grandiose ambitions scared potential investors, which drove the company to postpone an I.P.O. and ultimately consider replacing him.

His ouster may force a reckoning at several longtime WeWork backers:

• JPMorgan Chase had long courted both the company and Mr. Neumann as clients, Andrew notes in his latest column. That gave the bank deep insights into WeWork — and should have given it pause about potential conflicts of interest like certain deals that Mr. Neumann cut with the company.

• JPMorgan “had to know” about Mr. Neumann’s self-dealing and other behavior, Nell Minow, a corporate governance expert, told Andrew. “That’s literally their job. And if they didn’t, they were beyond negligent.”

• Benchmark ultimately agreed that Mr. Neumann must go. But that makes WeWork the second time that the famed venture capital firm moved to oust the founder of a company it has backed. That raises questions about whether it could lose out on future investment deals, the WSJ notes.

And it raises questions about how WeWork will keep the lights on. The company is in talks with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs about a new $3 billion loan, the WSJ reports. That would most likely require it to raise fresh equity from SoftBank, one of its biggest current backers. The company is also weighing cutting as many as 5,000 jobs, the NYT adds.

That may not be enough. Changing the C.E.O. won’t necessarily improve WeWork’s health writes Shira Ovide of Bloomberg Opinion: “This company needs to be overhauled from top to bottom, period.”

____________________________

Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Michael J. de la Merced, Lindsey Underwood and Stephen Grocer.

____________________________

Stocks declined yesterday after Democrats announced that they plan to begin a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump. Market futures appear to show another drop today, suggesting the ride could be bumpy as the conflict in Washington heats up.

Both the S&P 500 and the Dow slipped nearly 1 percent yesterday, while the Nasdaq fell 1.5 percent. Investors feared that impeachment proceedings could destabilize the U.S. economy, breaking what had been a lull for the markets this month.

Stocks pared back even bigger losses after Mr. Trump said he would release the full transcript of a call he had with the president of Ukraine, following a battle over a whistle-blower complaint about the leaders’ interactions.

The fireworks are just getting started. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ended months of reluctance to pursue impeachment hearings, saying yesterday that Mr. Trump had “seriously violated the Constitution” and “must be held accountable” for the Ukraine matter. Mr. Trump shot back on Twitter, declaring the move “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT.”

There’s reason for the White House to worry. Privately, Trump administration officials fear that an impeachment battle will stymie his already challenged legislative agenda and undercut his negotiating standing with other world leaders, Politico reports. It paints an especially gloomy outlook for the renegotiated NAFTA deal that Mr. Trump wants Congress to pass, which already faced tough odds of winning approval.

Two Volkswagen executives have been charged with stock market manipulation in Germany, Jack Ewing of the NYT reports. The accusations are linked to the diesel emissions scandal that has tainted the company’s reputation.

Hans Dieter Pötsch, Volkswagen’s chairman, and Herbert Diess, its C.E.O., were named as defendants along with Martin Winterkorn, who resigned as the carmaker’s C.E.O. after the scandal emerged in 2015.

Prosecutors say the men failed to inform shareholders of an investigation in the U.S. that led to its conviction for emissions cheating.

“Mr. Pötsch and Mr. Diess indicated that they would stay in their jobs, and there was no sign of any move by other members of Volkswagen’s supervisory board or its largest shareholder to oust either of them,” Mr. Ewing reports.

Both men face to up to five years in prison if convicted. They denied the charges against them, as did Mr. Winterkorn.

Massachusetts plans to ban all vaping products for four months, the “most extensive state-level crackdown on e-cigarettes after a mysterious illness has afflicted hundreds and killed nine people,” Hannah Knowles of the WaPo reports.

• “The purpose of this public health emergency is to temporarily pause all sales of vaping products so that we can work with our medical experts to identify what is making people sick and how to better regulate these products to protect the health of our residents,” Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, said in a statement.

• “The state’s new policy drew swift criticism from e-cigarette advocates and companies that have long argued their products help rather than hurt public health by offering smokers an alternative,” Ms. Knowles writes.

More: Juul reportedly plans to scale back hiring and eliminate jobs amid the crackdown on e-cigarettes.

John Stankey, who was officially appointed C.O.O. of the telecom and media giant this month, is a major target for criticism by the hedge fund Elliott Management. But in an interview with the WSJ, he defended his performance and his plans.

Mr. Stankey is still holding onto his title of WarnerMedia, despite speculation that he may eventually cede that role. (NBC News reported yesterday that Jeff Zucker, who oversees CNN, is the leading candidate to take over the Warner empire.) “I’m not looking to find my successor right at the moment,” Mr. Stankey told the WSJ.

He still believes in DirecTV, despite Elliott’s concerns that AT&T should sell the struggling satellite-TV business. He said the company plans to hold onto DirecTV, calling it “an important part of what we’re going to be doing going forward.”

And he says you should prepare to pay more for HBO Max, AT&T’s forthcoming streaming service. It’s expected to cost more than the $15 a month that HBO currently costs, and much more than what Disney, Netflix and Apple will charge for their online video products. “Higher quality should warrant a slightly higher price,” he said.

Vox Media has agreed to buy New York Media, the company behind the biweekly print magazine and five digital offshoots including The Cut and Vulture, Marc Tracy and Edmund Lee of the NYT report.

The all-stock deal combines New York Media, a decades-old chronicler of both highbrow and lowbrow topics, with the 14-year-old Vox, one of the most successful digital media publishers. Executives didn’t disclose the value of the acquisition.

“No one had to do this,” Pamela Wasserstein, New York Media’s C.E.O., told the NYT. “It’s a brilliant, in our view, opportunity, so that’s why we leaned into it. It’s not out of need. It’s out of ambition.”

The deal comes as media companies ponder mergers as a way to gain scale to increase their chances of long-term survival. “Venture capital-backed sites like BuzzFeed, Vice, Bustle, Refinery29 and Group Nine have sought mergers in the last year, arguing that scale and cost savings are crucial at a time when digital advertising, dominated by Google and Facebook, fails to pay the bills,” the NYT notes.

German conglomerate ThyssenKrupp has moved to dismiss Guido Kerkhoff as C.E.O., after just 14 months in the job.

NIO, a Chinese electric-car start-up, is laying off 20 percent of its employees after second-quarter losses.

Deals

• Saudi Arabia is said to be moving forward with an I.P.O. of Saudi Aramco, and is considering listing a bigger stake in the state-owned oil company than previously expected. (WSJ)

• Alibaba has bought a third of Ant Financial, the financial-services affiliate that is controlled by its founder, Jack Ma. (Bloomberg)

• Shares in the Nordic private equity firm EQT soared 34 percent in their market debut yesterday, valuing the money manager at $8.1 billion. (Bloomberg)

• Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina and Cambia Health Solutions said their merger was on hold following revelations about the arrest of the North Carolina insurer’s C.E.O. in June. (WSJ)

• Britain’s Metro Bank may be forced into selling itself after investors rejected its effort to sell $249 million worth of bonds. (FT)

Politics and policy

• The Labor Department expanded the number of workers eligible for overtime pay, the first increase since 2004 but a weaker standard than the Obama administration had recommended. (NYT)

• Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a new tax on the wealth of the richest Americans, including a steep tax on billionaires that could greatly diminish their fortunes. (NYT)

• President Emmanuel Macron of France reportedly tried to broker a meeting between President Trump and President Hassan Rouhani of Iran. (WSJ)

• The Justice Department ended an investigation without charges for Tony Podesta, a Democratic lobbyist, and former Representative Vin Weber of Minnesota in a case connected to lobbying for Ukraine and Paul Manafort. (NBC News)

• “California’s widening war with the Trump administration has careened from disputes over automotive-exhaust regulation, air quality and highway funding, and into the briny salt ponds of San Francisco Bay. And that’s just in the past five days.”(Bloomberg)

Trade

• The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, warned the U.N. General Assembly of “endless troubles” if Washington and Beijing can’t reach a trade agreement. (WSJ)

• The U.S. is reportedly weighing potential tariffs on E.U. goods after the World Trade Organization ruled that Europe had provided illegal financial support to Airbus. (Bloomberg)

• China’s move to import more American soybeans hasn’t done much for U.S. farmers. (Bloomberg)

Tech

• How TikTok censors anything that displeases Beijing. ( Guardian)

• The London transport authorities gave Uber two months to continue operating in the city rather than the full five-year license the company had sought. (NYT)

• Amazon started Amazon Care, a virtual medical clinic for its employees. (CNBC)

• Facebook says it doesn’t fact-check or block politicians’ content, assuming it’s newsworthy, even if it violates the site’s policies. (TechCrunch)

• Samsung’s fragile $2,000 folding phone is finally here. (WaPo)

Best of the rest

• Thomas Cook, the British travel agency that collapsed on Monday, would have run out of cash by Oct. 4, court filings show. (FT)

• Friends and relatives of victims of the Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting sent a letter to Warner Bros. expressing concern about the “Joker,” which portrays the Batman villain as a mentally ill loner looking for revenge. (NYT)

• A Los Angeles business executive was sentenced to four months in prison in the nationwide college admissions cheating case. (WSJ)

• Showtime has acquired the rights to Vice’s weekly docuseries, which previously aired on HBO. (CNN)

• The first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates is headed to space. (NYT)

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.

You can find live updates throughout the day at nytimes.com/dealbook.

We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to business@nytimes.com.