As WeWork Grew, Wall Street Lent It Money and Credibility

Here is the low down on how the banks helped promote WeWork to its place of disintegration.... Aivars Lode

Banks jockeying for a role in WeWork’s public debut wooed founder Adam Neumann with sky-high valuations that would make him a billionaire many times over. Their loans to the company told a different story.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other banks arranged giant fees and strict protections that reflected their concerns about WeWork’s unproven business model and Mr. Neumann’s unpredictable behavior.

When Wells Fargo & Co. signed on to a $6 billion loan earlier this year, Mr. Neumann said: “If the largest lender in this country can get comfortable with this, then everybody should.”

Yet Wells Fargo, the fourth-largest U.S. bank, only started lending to WeWork after an executive at the bank promised to keep an eye on Mr. Neumann, according to people familiar with the matter.

Banks harbored significant doubts about We Co., as the WeWork parent is known, even as they pitched its stock to investors, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Running out of cash, the company was rescued last month by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. in a deal that bounced Mr. Neumann.

WeWork’s unraveling has hit hardest the wallets and reputations of SoftBank and other venture-capital investors who enabled Mr. Neumann and his company’s rise. But with its money and credibility, Wall Street also fed the company’s breakneck growth and its image as a superhot technology company.

Choosing the Right Earnings Day is a Complex Task for Finance Executives

Picking when to report sounds like CFO’s have something to hide. Most notable reading: Jefferies, Wells Fargo, Citi and JP Morgan analyst tech reports... the majority sound like they are making an excuse for lack of performance.... Aivars Lode

Thursday was the most popular day to report financial results this earnings season. And, for some companies, that might have been a good thing.

Deciding when to report financial performance increasingly involves a deliberate weighing of regulations, executive travel plans and the timing of competitors’ reports, all in an effort to maximize—or perhaps avoid—attention from analysts and investors.

“Investors are paying close attention to when companies release earnings,” said Sandy Peters, the head of financial reporting policy at the CFA Institute. “That’s something that CFOs and heads of investor relations should factor into their thought process.”

On Thursday, over 420 companies listed in the U.S. released earnings, which might have been good or bad, depending on the company, according to Wall Street Horizon Inc., a data provider that tracks over 7,500 companies globally.

Reporting on a busy day can make it easier for companies to hide disappointing results amid a tsunami of information from other businesses. But a small company with good news to present might be overlooked by the volume of corporate behemoths reporting on the same day.