WeWork to pump $500m into South-east Asia

WeWork Cos, the world’s largest provider of shared work spaces, will invest $500 million in Southeast Asia and South Korea, as the New York-based company steps up its expansion in global markets.

As part of the effort, WeWork will acquire Spacemob, a Singapore-based co-working startup founded in early 2016 by entrepreneur Turochas “T” Fuad and backed by Vertex Ventures and Alpha JWC Ventures. WeWork declined to disclose the value of the deal.

WeWork, which will absorb Spacemob’s team of about 20 people, appointed founder Fuad as its managing director of Southeast Asia. WeWork also named Matt Shampine as general manager of Korea. — Bloomberg US financial technology provider Fiserv made an improved offer for Monitise worth about 75 million pounds ($98 million) on Monday, hoping to secure backing from the British financial services technology group’s investors.

Fiserv’s earlier offer, which valued the group at about 70 million pounds, drew criticism from Monitise’s investors led by Cavendish Asset Management, for being too low, given that the British group was worth over 1 billion pounds three year ago.

Fiserv’s final offer of 3.1 pence in cash per share represents a premium of 34.8 percent over Monitise’s closing price on June 12, the last before the initial offer was made.

Monitise said its directors unanimously recommended the increased and final offer, which is higher than the original 2.9 pence per share bid. —

Fiserv raises offer for Monitise to $98 million