WeWork has filed a lawsuit over a cancelled $3 billion tender offer by its largest shareholder SoftBank Group (9984.Japan) on behalf of a special committee of outside directors, seeking to force its single largest investor and financial rescuer to complete a now-terminated tender offer for $3 billion of WeWork shares.
The infusion would have helped stabilize WeWork, which has worked to rebound from its failed IPO, since the company was faced with a surge of vacancies arising from the global coronavirus pandemic.
The Softbank said last month that its “many, new and important pending criminal and civil investigations” were pulling out of the $3 billion rescue plan which changed the conditions in advance of the scheduled closing date for April 1.
The co-working company says that Soft Bank violating the agreement signed by both parties last fall “is a violation of the fiduciary duties of SoftBank against WeWork’s minority stockholders, including hundreds of existing and former workers.”
The directors of WeWork would like a chancery judge to order Softbank to make a stock purchase and to recognize that it has trampled on the rights of some investors in the workplace provider.