How does a surfer dude who appears to be fixated on vegetarianism and getting the world to stop buying single-use plastic pull the wool over the eyes of global titans of industry? Adam Neumann, who built WeWork after several business failures, just had to click his fingers and the bosses of US stock exchanges came running. He had the ear of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and other powerful figures of global business. The Wall Street Journal has pieced together a fascinating tale of the fall from grace of WeWork, which increasingly looks like a house of cards cunningly built by Neumann and his fickle wife, Rebekah. The hippy-looking couple took advantage of the trappings of wealth and PCness to con some ordinarily clever financiers into parting with staggering sums. So mesmerising were the WeWork pair that an exchange offered a stock market index dedicated to their cause. – Jackie Cameron
The fall of WeWork: How a startup darling came unglued