WeWork killed Adam Neumann’s $185M consulting gig, exec says

Adam Neumann’s golden parachute just lost nine figures.

The erstwhile founder and CEO of WeWork appears to have had his $185 million consulting fee yanked, according to his replacement who claimed on Monday that Neumann violated an agreement with WeWork’s owner, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.

“I don’t think that consulting agreement is still in force,” Marcelo Claure said at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference on Monday. “I think Adam may have violated some of the parts of the consulting agreement, so that’s no longer in effect.”

While Claure declined to specify what Neumann might have done to blow $185 million, the 41-year-old Neumann was revealed to be a colorful character given to bizarre decision-making before his unceremonious ouster last year.

Leading up to his September 2019 departure following a failed IPO attempt, reports swirled that Neumann promoted a party culture at WeWork that included him smoking weed on a private jet. He was also accused of not doing enought to rein in spending at the money-losing company.

“We probably were a little too aggressive with WeWork,” Claure mused on Monday. “We probably allowed the entrepreneur to work too freely without having the right SoftBank involvement.”

His exit package included $1 billion of stock, $500 million of debt refinancing and the potentially vaporized $185 million consulting fee.

Neumann appears to be planning a comeback, however, and just invested $30 million in luxury residential management software startup Alfred Club earlier this month.