WeWork’s board in a crisis huddle

WeWork’s board is expected to meet tomorrow to weigh emergency-financing options including a takeover by SoftBank Group that would slash the co-working company’s valuation to about $8 billion and alleviate a looming cash crunch.

Ahead of a Monday deadline to submit bids, SoftBank had offered to lend $5 billion to the struggling startup and accelerate a $1.5 billion equity investment that had been scheduled for next year, people familiar with the matter said.

SoftBank also would offer to buy more than $1 billion of stock from existing investors and employees, some of the people said.

JPMorgan Chase is expected to field a competing loan package that would bring together a group of outside investors.

There is no guarantee it will be able to, and the terms it has outlined to potential investors so far are more expensive and complicated than what SoftBank is offering. SoftBank’s offer would value WeWork at less than half of what the company had been looking to fetch in a nowscrapped initial public offering.

It is even further from the $47 billion at which WeWork was valued in a funding from SoftBank in January.

SoftBank’s offer, first reported earlier this month by The Wall Street Journal, would further sideline Adam Neumann, WeWork’s flamboyant cofounder who was recently forced out as chief executive officer.

SoftBank would likely buy some shares from Neumann and seek to further diminish his voting control over the company he co-founded in 2010, some of the people said.

A top SoftBank executive, Marcelo Claure, would succeed Neumann as board chairman and head a search for outside leadership, including potentially a new CEO to succeed the two men who have been sharing the job since Neumann’s departure.