[hn_throwaway_99]

I'm also glad the 2019 IPO didn't materialize, but if it had, anyone who bought in would have been deserving of no pity and I wouldn't call them "innocent retail investors". As badly managed as WeWork was, this was not a case of fraud. Everything was wide out in the open, for anyone with eyes and a brain to see. Heck, the whole reason the 2019 IPO didn't go through is that WeWork's original S-1 was such a shit show of epic proportions, with nothing but red ink as far as the eye could see and completely made up vanity metrics, that Wall Street's collective reaction was "Are you fucking kidding me?"

[sgerenser]

Matt Levine's contemporaneous take on the WeWork IPO and associated shenanigans by Neumann: https://archive.is/qkJXl

[bhouston]

Matt Levine is a national treasure.