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Maurice Lévy’s term as chief marketing officer for WeWork ended quietly a few weeks ago, Bell can reveal.
The 77-year-old former chief executive of Publicis Groupe (and now chairman of its advisory board) stepped down as interim director of marketing for the embattled office-swapping business in late February.
Lévy was announced in November 2019 as a surprise appointment to lead WeWork’s marketing efforts on an interim basis, following the departure of Robin Daniels.
During its short stint, WeWork produced a newspaper ad in December in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial times to remind customers that “WeWork is on the move. At the forefront.”
The work was created by Publicis, which will continue to support WeWork. A successor to Lévy has not been announced, but the company hired Marissa Shorenstein as director of communications in February, just weeks after Sandeep Mathrani’s installation as executive director.
Lévy told him Bell: “I was delighted to help WeWork rebuild its marketing and communications departments. Publicis is helping through its teams on both counts and my role ended in late February.”
WeWork has been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic, as employees of nonessential companies in Europe and North America have been told to work from home as part of social distancing efforts.
However, the company had been in trouble long before the global health emergency, had failed to make an initial public offering in September 2019, and then accepted a multi-million dollar bailout by Japanese venture capital investor SoftBank in October. Last week, SoftBank withdrew its $ 3 billion (£ 2.4 billion) offer for WeWork shares, citing civil and criminal investigations as reasons for exiting the deal.
According to a March 26 letter to investors, WeWork said it had $ 4.4 billion in cash as of December 31, 2019 and that the company believes it had the financial resources and liquidity to carry out its plan until 2024. (even facing the challenges created by Covid- 19)
