Good evening.

I'm William D. Cohan, the author of six books and a former M&A banker. Welcome back to Dry Powder, my private email about what's really happening on Wall Street.

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Jack Ma’s Disappearance, WeWork’s I.P.O., and the Elon Exodus

Regarding the most pressing questions on Wall Street and in my inbox.

WeWork hit $228 million in revenue in September, its highest level this year, and occupancy rates are up to 60 percent ahead of its listing on the NYSE (via a SPAC merger with BowX Acquisition Corp). Has Adam Neumann been vindicated?

Vindicated is not the word I would use. Neumann’s legacy is written in the pages of the excellent The Cult of We, the recent book by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell. There’s no changing that. He’s a complete self-indulgent narcissist who, despite all the WeWork detritus strewn across the Wall Street landscape, managed to walk out the door with $1.1 billion, or so, in his pocket. A venture-capitalist who read the book told Farrell that WeWork was like Theranos minus the alleged crimes: also, Neumann walked out the door with a lot more money than when he came in.

Will the new, slimmed-down, refocused WeWork merger with the BowX SPAC succeed at a much-reduced $9 billion valuation—down from $47 billion at the time of WeWork’s implosion two years ago?

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