
A former WeWork employee is suing over Adam Neumann's $1.7B golden parachute - virtualwhys
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/wework-ex-employee-sues-adam-neumann-2-billion-leaving-deal-2019-11-1028675038
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lovich
For everyone here defending Adam, I pose this question.

How exactly is capitalism supposed to work when people can use their power to
funnel money to themselves from company funds while everyone else who took on
equity to work at a startup is fucked?

Is the answer "be more careful next time"? If that's the case, why would
people follow the rules of law when someone else is able to fuck over hundreds
of people and walk away a billionaire. Why should employees not try and steal
from their company when the CEO can do it _and_ get a golden parachute when
their behavior destroys the value of the company?

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crb002
Shareholder equal protection needs to be established more in the courts. It is
bogus when some shareholders get massive constructive dividends while others
get none.

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Canada
Perhaps it would be good if all material facts related to a company must be
disclosed to all share/option/warrant holders once the number of equity
holders or claimed value of the company exceeds a certain threshold. At least
an annual balance sheet, income statement, and cap table.

I've found that in practice the legal rights of minority shareholders are
often not respected in private companies and there's not a lot that you can do
about it.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _it would be good if all material facts related to a company must be
> disclosed to all share /option/warrant holders_

Delaware law gives all shareholders the right to inspect their companies'
"books and records" [1].

Recently, private shareholders have had to sue to exercise this right [2].
That's a shame regulators should fix.

[1] [https://codes.findlaw.com/de/title-8-corporations/de-code-
se...](https://codes.findlaw.com/de/title-8-corporations/de-code-
sect-8-220.html)

[2] [https://law.justia.com/cases/delaware/supreme-
court/2019/281...](https://law.justia.com/cases/delaware/supreme-
court/2019/281-2018.html)

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lukevdp
Does anybody have any insight as to whether this case has merit or not?

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rolltiide
This case has no merit and that court is not the venue to air these
grievances.

A more effective idea would be to push for exchanges like Nasdaq to reject
listing companies with these share structure attributes.

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dblank9
I know it's fashionable to hate on Adam right now, but without him THERE WOULD
BE NO COMPANY TO SUE. People tend to forget that.

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pergadad
Brokej window fallacy!

Without him there would be no WeWork but other less broken companies could
have received the same capital, created jobs, etc

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rolltiide
Its only “self dealing” when you haven’t granted yourself that right, if the
organization type has a constraint from the government or if it doesnt then if
the organization type doesnt have bylaws specifically allowing you that right.

WeWork was structured by Adam to give himself that right my mere nature of
unilateral control via consolidated ownership and voting rights.

Part of the grievance is that his “self enrichment” torpedoed the IPO, which
is not part of reality which is that employees and “minority shareholders”
were sold and bought a dream that the market was laughing at the whole time.

WeWork’s structure was always rat infested with a valuation nobody would
accept. These payments wouldnt have changed that, its debt load, burn rate and
subsidiary structure was the problem.

This case has no merit and that court is not the venue to air these
grievances.

I think a more effective idea would be to push for exchanges like Nasdaq to
reject listing companies with these share structure attributes.

