WeWork stock starts trading, two years after an aborted IPO

Two years after WeWork’s attempt to become a public company flamed out spectacularly, the coworking giant started trading on the stock market Thursday, hoping that investors will now believe in its prospects.

The earlier effort collided with concerns about WeWork’s breakneck growth, its huge losses and the alarming management style of its co-founder Adam Neumann. WeWork has new leaders who have pared back its expenses and hope to exploit an office space market that has been upended by the pandemic. But the company still has lofty growth targets, big losses and many empty desks in its 762 locations around the world. And WeWork made it through the last two years only because of huge financial support from SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate that is WeWork’s largest shareholder.