More fool Mark Dixon. The IWG boss has been doing his flexible working thing for three decades. He’s relentlessly reinvented the business, right down to changing the company name from Regus. It makes real money, too: £139 million of pre-tax profits last year on £2.54 billion sales. And still it was valued at only £2.5 billion. Contrast Wework, some smaller, trendier upstart frequented by millennials too creative to commute. Founded in 2010, it somehow lost $1.9 billion last year on $1.8 billion sales. But who cares about that? Adam Neumann, its co-founder and chief executive, has longer hair than Mr Dixon. And he gives away free beer. So little wonder the private outfit backed by Softbank was valued at $42 billion in its latest funding
The valuation gap between IWG and WeWork is bonkers according to The Times , something CEO Mark Dixon has spent the last decade or more trying to close . His most recent idea , selling the group ’s Japanese network to TKP and entering into a long - term franchising deal has finally been successful . News of the deal , which Dixon sees as the start of an evolution into and asset - lite business model , saw the company rally 24 % . Stifel said the deal implied a valuation of £ 6bn ( $ 7.8bn ) for the whole group . Japan accounts for just 10 % of revenues and now Dixon needs to prove he can do the similar deals in bigger parts of the business in America , Brazil , France and other markets reported The Times .