WeWork Among Firms Still Active In Russia After Ukraine Invasion
Flexible office giant WeWork is among 400 multinational companies still active in Russia more than 500 days after the country invaded Ukraine, data from U.S. and Ukrainian academics showed.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Yale School of Management senior associate dean and Lester Crown professor in management practice, and Steven Tian, Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute director of research, wrote in an article in Fortune magazine that WeWork has been downgraded in their analysis of companies with a presence in Russia because it still operates in the country despite previously saying it would pull out.
“Not only has WeWork not left Russia, anyone can continue to book a workspace in Russia on the WeWork app,” they wrote.
In their list of more than 1,000 international companies that were active in Russia before it invaded Ukraine in 2022, Sonnenfeld and Tian give WeWork a grade of D, putting it in the Buying Time section of the list. The 179 companies in this section are “holding off new investments/development” or are “companies postponing future planned investment/development/marketing while continuing substantive business.” The Yale research is undertaken in partnership with the Kyiv School of Economics.
WeWork’s website still lists four locations in Moscow and offers the option to get in touch about taking space ranging from single desks to entire floors.
“As previously stated, we have full intentions to discontinue operations in Russia and are in the final stages of our divestiture plans,” a WeWork spokesperson said Wednesday in response to an inquiry from Bisnow.
“We unequivocally condemn the unprovoked and unjust war that is bringing senseless devastation to the people of Ukraine,” WeWork said in March 2022. “Together with our colleagues, members, and landlords, we have been finalizing solutions to divest operations in Russia and we’ve suspended all expansion plans for the business in this region. We continue to focus on the safety of our colleagues and all those affected by the ongoing conflict. We stand in solidarity with Ukraine, and have a partnership with the UN Refugee Agency to support refugees fleeing in Eastern Europe, assist with aid and resources, and provide free space for those in immediate need.”
International companies that the research cites under the category Digging In and not leaving Russia include retailers Guess and Benetton and restaurant group TGI Friday.
Several of the real estate firms still active are Chinese, including Vanke and Poly Real Estate.
An exception in real estate is Hines, which Bisnow revealed was selling its assets and leaving Russia a year after the invasion of Ukraine.
At the time of the invasion last February, Hines’ website listed 11 assets owned or managed in the country, with a value of around $2.3B. It now lists eight. Sonnenfeld and Tian gave Hines a C grade and categorized it among the Scaling Back companies in this year's analysis.
In April this year, Hines sold a 2.2M SF shopping centre in Moscow that it jointly owned with Morgan Stanley and the California Public Employees' Retirement System.
A Morgan Stanley fund paid $1.2B for the mall in 2013 and a few months later sold a stake — reportedly 50% — to the Hines CalPERS Russia Long Term Hold Fund.
Assets no longer listed on Hines' website are Ducat Place III, a 14-storey office building in Moscow, and Phase 2 of outlet village Belaya Dacha on the outskirts of Moscow. The company did not set out a time frame for selling out of its Russian holdings.
Morgan Stanley also owns the 1.1M SF Galeria Shopping Mall in St. Petersburg in a joint venture with Middle Eastern fund Mubadala.
Ikea is also cited in the Yale research under the Scaling Back category. It has discontinued its retail operations in the country but kept open the shopping centers it owns.
Brokers including CBRE, Colliers, JLL and Savills all discontinued their operations in Russia within six weeks of the invasion.
“We need to once again explicitly call out 400 major multinationals that continue to do business in the country, generating hundreds of billions of dollars in support of Putin’s mass slaughter in his assault on a peaceful neighbor 18 months into the conflict,” Sonnenfeld and Tian wrote.
