Chris Bryant, Columnist

WeWork's Balance Sheet Looks Ugly So Yours Doesn’t

$47 billion of lease obligations will have to be met somehow.

September 2, 2019 at 6:30 AM UTC

Chris Bryant is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies in Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for the Financial Times.

The office of the future?
Photographer: David 'Dee' Delgado/Bloomberg

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How to make sense of the whopping $47 billion in lease liabilities that WeWork disclosed ahead of its planned IPO?

That figure makes WeWork one of the world’s largest lessees, according to Bloomberg data, which is pretty astonishing considering the flexible office space provider was founded less than a decade ago, bleeds cash, and doesn’t plan to become profitable any time soon.