WeWork Hits the Brakes in New York, London After IPO Debacle

  • Space leased by company nosedived in final months of 2019
  • Company still expanding under new ownership, management

A taxi drives past a logo for WeWork in London.

Photographer: Bryn Colton/Bloomberg
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WeWork’s days of breakneck expansion are over, at least for now.

New leases by the flexible office firm nosedived in New York and London, its top two markets, in the final quarter of last year, CoStar Group Inc. data show. It signed just 64,000 square feet (5,946 square meters) of space in Manhattan, the lowest in more than five years, while the 49,000 square feet in London was the least since the U.K.’s Brexit vote in the second quarter of 2016.