After a year in which a global pandemic turned offices across the world into ghost towns WeWork, the embattled communal office-space company, is making a second attempt at going public.

BY MICHELLE CHAPMAN AND KELVIN CHAN, AP Business Writers

After a year in which a global pandemic turned offices across the world into ghost towns WeWork, the embattled communal office-space company, is making a second attempt at going public. The announcement Friday comes almost two years after WeWork’s first attempt at becoming a publicly traded company blew up in spectacular fashion, its founder and CEO ousted abruptly. This time the New York company becomes part of the SPAC wave and will seek a listing after merging with the special-purpose acquisition company BowX Acquisition. The agreement values WeWork at $9 billion plus debt, far below the $47 billion valuation given the venture in September 2019 when the IPO imploded after massive losses were revealed in regulatory filings. WeWork said it would also raise $1.3 billion. The deal with BowX provides a lifeline to WeWork. Armed with cash raised from investors, SPACs look for privately held companies to buy so that the company can easily list its stock on an exchange. And the volume of companies going public through SPACS has exploded. Click to read more at www.usnews.com.