WeWork
3 Things We Learned About Smart Building SPACs in 2022
December 20th, 2022Mapping Cushman & Wakefield Strategy in Smart Buildings
November 23rd, 2022
SoftBank Bets On Robotic Cleaning in Smart Buildings
It was not that long ago that a significant fall in the Yen was met with open arms by major Japanese companies seeking to be more competitive in the global market. However, when this month began with the currency at a 20-year low, the reaction from Japan’s biggest companies has been decidedly mixed. In recent […]

The State of SPACs in the Smart Building & PropTech Space
In this Research Note, we examine companies in the proptech and smart buildings space which have opted for a SPAC route to become publicly listed in 2021 and 2022 to date, based on their annual reports, investor presentations, our M&A transactions database and analysis of previous deals. SPAC acquisitions accounted for 11 completed transactions in the smart […]

Commercial Real Estate & the Sharing Economy
The largest hotel company in the world doesn’t own a single bed. The largest taxi company in the world does not own a fleet of vehicles. And, the largest content provider in the world does not make content. AirBnB, Uber, and YouTube have all become the leaders in their industry by creating platforms for a […]

Exploring the Psychology Behind the Hybrid Workplace
“It’s pretty obvious that those who are overly engaged with the company want to go to the office two-thirds of the time at least. Those who are least engaged are very comfortable working from home,” said Sandeep Mathrani, CEO of office leasing company WeWork, during The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything festival. Since the event, Mathrani’s comment […]

WeWork Differently Now
It wasn’t that long ago that WeWork’s rapid rise and fall was a regular feature in business and financial news but it soon faded into the background as the COVID-19 pandemic took center stage across all media. Taking the company out of the spotlight was likely already a strategy for Sandeep Lakhmi Mathrani when he […]

The Hybrid Workplace Is Not A Flexible Choice But An Inevitable Reality
We have been talking about flexible work more and more each year for the last decade but the events of 2020 have brought this discussion to the fore. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a mass remote working trial beyond anything anyone could ever have imagined, as we discussed in March. Now, as we move into December […]

End of the Road for WeWork? Recession Spells Uncertain Times for Co-Working
In August 2017, a New York co-working startup named WeWork was squeezed into a unicorn outfit and hurled on to the world stage by a $4.4 billion investment from Japanese conglomerate Softbank. By August 2018, as WeWork’s astronomical growth continued, we started to question our assumptions of this as a fad, contemplating WeWork as the […]

The Workplace is Like a City with Distinct Zones for Each Activity
The workplace is evolving into a more human space. Alongside the technological transformation of our office buildings, new approaches to workplace design have emerged that have found the best path to productivity is to focus on the various needs of their diverse group of employees. Our cities, that have developed over decades and centuries, offer […]