Landlords have begun contingency planning for the potential collapse or a big restructuring of Wework, which would lead to a flood of office space being left empty. The global property market is assessing how to respond to the delay to Wework’s planned flotation. Insufficient interest from investors, which have raised concerns about the serviced office company’s business model and valuation, led to the listing being shelved this week. Wework has 527,000 members in 528 locations across 27 countries, having expanded rapidly since it was founded in New York nine years ago. It is the largest corporate occupier of office space in London and New York. Hines, a global property investor with $125 billion of assets under management in 23 countries, has held “internal discussions” about
Landlords around the world have become concerned about the risk of a collapse or major restructuring of WeWork and are making contingency plans, according to the Times . Global property investor WeWork , which has 10 million sq ft , said it has held internal talks about managing the impact of a sudden return of some or all of the 10 million sq ft of office space it has leased to WeWork . A Landsec -based landlord that counts Hines as a tenant told the Times locations let to enterprise clients would be easier for landlords to operate themselves, but many were questioning what they would do with all the space in a worst-case scenario. A number of landlords, including Hines , British Land and Landsec , have launched flexible office brands over this week .