WeWork courts T-Mobile's John Legere for CEO spot
The Wall Street Journal reports the troubled office sharing startup is looking to hire T-Mobile's CEO to take over.
WeWork is supposedly in talks with T-Mobile CEO John Legere to become its new CEO.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere is in talks to become CEO of WeWork, the struggling office-sharing startup, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The company has been looking for a new chief executive since WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann stepped down as CEO last month. WeWork, which provides shared workspaces for tech startups, for the moment is being led by co-CEOs Artie Minson, the former chief financial officer, and Sebastian Gunningham, former vice chairman.
T-Mobile and WeWork both declined to comment on the report.
Neumann's departure came after WeWork's failed attempt at an initial public offering. SoftBank Group bailed the company out last month by buying a majority stake in the company. SoftBank is also a majority owner in US wireless carrier Sprint , which is being bought by T-Mobile. Legere is CEO of T-Mobile, which he has led since 2012.
Legere has shepherded T-Mobile through seven years of growth after the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice nixed the then-fledgling wireless carrier's merger with AT&T. The unconventional CEO, who has taken to Twitter to criticize rivals as "Dumb and Dumber," has built the UnCarrier brand, adding millions of subscribers every quarter, and has shaken up the wireless industry by eliminating wireless contracts and other offerings, such as unlimited data plans.
Marcelo Claure, the former chairman and CEO of Sprint, has been acting as the chairman of WeWork and the de facto head of the turnaround effort since Softbank poured $10 billion into the company last month. SoftBank and its Vision Fund now own about 80% of WeWork.
Legere and Claure have worked together and appeared before Congress over the past 18 months in their bid to win approval for the $26 billion merger between Sprint and T-Mobile.
