WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani to Step Down to Join Private Equity Firm Sycamore Partners as Director
- The Indian American was appointed CEO of the co-working space firm in February 2020 and as chairman of the Board in 2022.
WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani is stepping down effective May 26, the co-working space firm announced this week. The Indian American will join private equity firm Sycamore Partners as a director to lead its real estate activity, “improving and optimizing real estate often embedded within Sycamore’s target companies, according to a press release from the company. At We Work, he will be succeeded on an interim basis by a telecom executive, David Tolley, who joined the board early this year.
Mathrani, the former CEO of the retail giant GGP, was appointed CEO of WeWork in February 2020. Two years later he was elected chairman of the Board. During his three years at the company, he helped take the co-working company public through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, last year. However, since then, “he had cut costs and helped the company survive the pandemic when remote work surged,” noted technology magazine Information.
However, the company maintains that Mathrani’s resignation “was not a result of any disagreement,” Reuters reported. According to a Reuters report, “the company continues to lose money heavily. In 2022 it burned more than $1 billion and in the first quarter of this year it burned another $343 million.” The company announced last week that “it had completed a big debt restructuring which will provide new funding,” the report added.
The India-born-and-raised Mathrani began as the CEO of GGP Inc. in 2011, just as the company was emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He was CEO until 2018 when it was purchased by Brookfield Property. After the acquisition, Mathrani joined Brookfield as the chief executive of its retail property management arm. Before that, he was an executive with Vornado Realty Trust.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering and management science and a master’s in engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.