Dr. Josef Schuster | Source | Founder at IPOX
Dr. Josef Schuster
Dr. Schuster is the founder of Chicago-based IPOX Schuster LLC and chief architect of the IPOX® Indexes. Before founding IPOX, he pursued his academic work on European IPOs in the Financial Markets Group (FMG) at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he completed his MSc and PhD and conceived the idea to start IPOX. He regularly appears in the media as an expert in global New Listings and respective investment products.
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IPOX
Founder
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WeWork Makes $9 Billion SPAC Deal in New Path to Go Public
(Bloomberg) -- WeWork agreed to sell itself to a blank-check company in a deal to take the troubled office-sharing startup public almost two years after a high-profile failed listing.The agreement will merge WeWork with BowX Acquisition Corp., valuing it at $9 billion including debt. It will also raise $1.3 billion for WeWork, including $800 million from a private placement with investors including Insight Partners, funds managed by Starwood Capital Group, and Fidelity Management.New York-based WeWork, co-founded by Adam Neumann and heavily backed by SoftBank Group Corp., was valued at as much as $47 billion two years ago. But plans for an initial public offering imploded in 2019 after investors raised concerns over the company’s business model and Neumann’s management style. WeWork’s valuation plunged to about $8 billion after SoftBank extended a financing lifeline to the startup. The flamboyant Neumann, known as much for his erratic behavior as for his innovative...
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Coming to the market with a SPAC is really as good as it can get for WeWork, to kind of keep this aspirational life to become a large publicly traded company down the road. The negative press and events associated with WeWork’s last attempt would have made it really difficult to raise billions of dollars in the public market, just as a straight and traditional IPO. So the SPAC structure here, I think really works for them.
