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Washington has grown an aver-
age of 28% per year since 2008.
A U.S. News article on Oct. 14
about the Northwestern state’s
management of the wolf popu-lation incorrectly said it grew
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0102030$40 billion2013 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18 ’We Worth
We'svaluationhasplungedasthecompanyscrappeditsIPO
andgrappledwithbacklashagainstco-founderAdamNeumann.Sources: Dow Jones Venture Capital (valuations by funding rounds); WSJ reports (Sept. and Oct.)*Expected valuation range for WeSeptember
$15-20B
IPOestimate*Tuesday
$8B
SoftBankofferJanuary
$47billion
lastfundingroundU.S. WATCH
TEXAS
House Speaker
Won’t Run Again
The speaker of the Texas
House of Representatives said
he won’t run for re-election next
year after the revelation of a se-
cretly recorded backroom con-
versation led his fellow Republi-
cans to call for him to step
down.
Rep. Dennis Bonnen made
the announcement Tuesday as
criticism of his leadership from
GOP legislators reached a fever
pitch this week, amid fears the
scandal could give Democrats an
opportunity to take back control
of the state House next year.
The scandal involving Mr. Bon-
nen has been unfolding for
months, since right-wing activist
Michael Quinn Sullivan said the
speaker had offered him coveted
media credentials in exchange for
campaigning against certain Re-
publicans in the 2020 primaries.
—Elizabeth Findell
FLORIDA
Design Errors Cited
In Bridge Collapse
A bridge at a Miami univer-
sity that collapsed and killed six
people last year showed signifi-
cant design errors and should
have been more carefully moni-
tored by the state because of
the project’s complexity, federal
officials said Tuesday.
The National Transportation
Safety Board members con-
cluded that design firm FIGG
Bridge Engineers Inc. underesti-
mated the load of the span and
overestimated its strength in a
critical section that splintered,
dropping a 174-foot-long section
onto eight cars in 2018.
The cracking observed days
before the collapse should have
prompted contractors and Florida
International University to close
the road but didn’t, leading to a
“catastrophic loss of life,” NTSB
Chairman Robert Sumwalt said.
The collapse wouldn’t have
happened if a critical section of
the bridge was built as required
by state standards, FIGG said.
But the NTSB findings said the
bridge still could have failed be-
cause of design miscalculations.
The project’s complexity
should have required a greater
oversight by the Florida Trans-
portation Department, the board
said. The probe showed the firm
tasked with conducting an inde-
pendent review was mistakenly
listed as qualified by FDOT.
FDOT said the companies
shouldn’t have simply relied on
its website-generated report as
proof of the reviewer’s creden-
tials, but NTSB’s vice chairman
Bruce Landsberg said the state
should have paid more atten-
tion.”If you can’t get correct in-
formation on your website, you
shouldn’t put it up at all,” he said.
—Associated PressGEORGIAEx-President Carter
Is Injured in a FallFormer Democratic President
Jimmy Carter had another fall at
his home in Plains, Ga., fractur-
ing his pelvis and going to the
hospital for treatment and ob-
servation, a spokeswoman said
Tuesday.
A Carter Center spokes-
woman described the fracture as
minor. She said he was in good
spirits at the Phoebe Sumter
Medical Center after falling Mon-
day evening. This is the third
time Mr. Carter, who is 95 years
old, has fallen in recent months.
—Associated Press$1,000 to gather signatures for
the other side’s petition.
“I’ve been living here for al-
most 35 years, and I’ve never
seen anything this nutty,” said
Ned Hill, a professor of eco-
nomic development at the John
Glenn College of Public Affairs
at Ohio State University. He
said he opposes the bailout.
Earlier this year, FirstEn-
ergy Solutions Corp., which is
in bankruptcy, said it needed
state funding to keep open twolittle beyond their salaries and—
for thousands set to be laid off—
any severance.
A top SoftBank executive,
Marcelo Claure, will succeed
Mr. Neumann as executive
board chairman, WeWork said.
The Bolivian-born former CEO
of Sprint Corp., who is said to
be close to Mr. Neumann, also
is expected to head a search for
outside leadership, including
potentially a new chief execu-
tive to replace the two men
who have been sharing the job
since Mr. Neumann’s departure.
The board will be expanded and
it will assume voting control of
Mr. Neumann’s shares, the
companies said.
SoftBank is racing to save an
investment that has soured in
rapidly. Its founder, Masayoshi
Son, was a major booster of Mr.Neumann, and the Japanese-
listed conglomerate invested
several times in WeWork, both
on its own and through its $
billion Vision Fund, which in-
cludes outside investors.
On a call with some of
those investors this week, Mr.
Son apologized for the We-
Work investment, saying he
had put too much faith in Mr.
Neumann, people familiar with
the matter said.
SoftBank will also move up a
$1.5 billion investment it had
been scheduled to make next
year and extend the company a
$5 billion loan.
Between 2017 and earlier
this year, SoftBank put more
than $9 billion into WeWork at
a roughly $24 billion valuation,
according to analysts at San-
ford C. Bernstein & Co. WhatSoftBank has agreed to add
would bring its total equity in-
vestment to more than $13 bil-
lion for a company now worth
less than $8 billion.
Mr. Neumann, who co-
founded WeWork in 2010, once
owned shares that carried 20
votes each, guaranteeing him
ironclad control of the com-
pany, even as new investors
came in. The SoftBank deal
would require that all We
shares carry one vote apiece.
Mr. Neumann’s stake in the
company is expected to fall to
below 10% after he sells shares.
SoftBank’s $500 million loan
to Mr. Neumann was a critical
part of the negotiations, as he
previously borrowed against
his stock at a much higher val-
uation. With the company’s
worth plummeting, he was in
danger of falling below the col-
lateral levels required by JP-
Morgan and other banks.
By relinquishing the CEO ti-
tle in late September, Mr. Neu-
mann was in technical default
on that loan, which could have
forced imminent repayment,
according to people familiar
with the matter. JPMorgan
gave him 45 days to work out a
solution. The new money from
SoftBank will allow Mr. Neu-
mann to repay the loans and
spare JPMorgan—which prides
itself on a “fortress balance
sheet” and savvy lending deci-
sions—from suffering a major
credit loss.
WeWork’s swift fall erased
nearly $40 billion on paper, a
collapse with little precedent
among startups. Just five
weeks ago, WeWork was plan-
ning an IPO that its bankers at
JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs
Group Inc. told company execu-
tives could fetch a valuation
around $20 billion.
—Liz Hoffman
and Rolfe Winkler
contributed to this article.lion of shares, or about one-
third of his stake, in a so-
called tender offer in which
SoftBank will buy up to $3 bil-
lion in WeWork stock from
employees and investors.
The Japanese conglomerate,
which already owns about a
third of the company, will also
extend Mr. Neumann credit to
help him repay a $500 million
loan facility led by JPMorgan,
the people said. It will also
pay him a $185 million con-
sulting fee.
Mr. Neumann has promised
to work exclusively with the
company for four years, some of
the people said. Mr. Neumann,
who has remained chairman of
WeWork parent We Co., will
step down from the board but
remain an observer and hold a
minority stake.
The money Mr. Neumann
will receive on his way out,
which he has told people he
sees as a validation of the job
he did building the company, is
likely to raise hackles among
employees, governance experts
and others. Mr. Neumann had
previously sold hundreds of
millions of dollars of his stock
in the company and borrowed
heavily against it.
While he will walk away a
billionaire, most We employees
are left holding stock options
that are underwater at the
roughly $20-a-share valuation
implied by the SoftBank deal, ac-
cording to former executives fa-
miliar with the compensation
packages. That leaves them withContinuedfromPageOneNeumann
To Receive
A Windfall
panies roll out more crash-
avoidance technologies across
their lineups. Features such
as lane-keep assist and auto-
matic emergency braking use
cameras, radars and other sen-
sors to detect dangers and
help drivers avoid them beforea collision takes place.
“New vehicles are safer
than older ones, and when
crashes occur, more new vehi-
cles are equipped with ad-
vanced technologies that pre-
vent or reduce the severity of
crashes,” NHTSA Acting Ad-ministrator James Owens said.
The agency also highlighted
progress in other areas. Alco-
hol-related driving fatalities
fell by 3.6% last year over
2017, while speeding-related
deaths declined 5.7%, the
NHTSA data shows.
The number of motorcy-
clists killed in crashes dropped
by 4.7%. There was a 10.3% re-
duction in the deaths of chil-
dren aged 14 and younger.
Overall, the rate of people
killed per every 100 million
miles traveled dropped to 1.13,
its lowest level since 2014.
Crashes involving dis-
tracted driving killed 2,
people last year, down 12.4%
from the year before, the regu-
latory agency found.
Distraction was a factor in
7.8% of all 2018 fatalities, but
NHTSA says researchers still
face difficulties in fully captur-
ing its impact in the data.U.S. traffic fatalities fell for
a second consecutive year in
2018, a decline federal safety
regulators attributed to auto
makers outfitting more new
vehicles with safety technolo-
gies that offer better protec-
tion when accidents occur.
Vehicle crashes killed a to-
tal of 36,560 people on U.S.
roadways last year, a 2.4% de-
cline from 2017, according to
data released Tuesday by the
National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration.
But the 6,283 pedestrians
killed in 2018—an increase of
3.4% from the previous
year—was the highest such
number since 1990, the latest
data shows. And the number
of cyclists killed climbed
6.3%, to 857.
The overall decline in road-
way deaths comes as car com-BYBENFOLDYTech Aids Cited as Traffic Deaths Fall
nuclear plants on Lake Erie
outside Cleveland and Toledo.
The state’s Republican-con-
trolled legislature passed a bill
to raise about $150 million a
year for those plants by im-
posing fees on electricity cus-
tomers. Households would pay
85 cents a month. Gov. Mike
DeWine, also a Republican,
signed the bill into law in July.
The law also trims funding
for renewable energy in the
state, while subsidizing twocoal-fired power plants, includ-
ing one in Indiana, owned by a
consortium of utilities. The law
has drawn opposition from envi-
ronmentalists, manufacturing
groups and consumer advocates.
A group called Ohioans
Against Corporate Bailouts
needed to file about 266,
signatures to the Ohio secretary
of state by Monday. The referen-
dum would give voters the op-
portunity to reverse the bailout.
Gene Pierce, a spokesmanU.S. NEWS
for the group, said it now
hopes a federal lawsuit it pre-
viously filed seeking more
time to gather signatures will
be successful. He wouldn’t say
how many signatures the
group had so far received.
Mr. Pierce said his group
hired about 1,500 signature
gatherers but that most had
been poached by another
group that supports the bail-
out, Ohioans for Energy Secu-
rity. On Monday, that group
delivered 846,000 signatures
to a state lawmaker on its own
nonbinding petition seeking
legislation to prevent foreign
investors from controlling en-
ergy generation in the state.
Carlo LoParo, a spokesman
for Ohioans for Energy Secu-
rity, the pro-bailout group, de-
nied that his group had done
anything wrong. “We followed
the law throughout the pro-
cess and exercised our First
Amendment rights,” he said.
Mr. LoParo said he believedthe antibailout referendum ef-
fort largely was pushed by
natural-gas companies and
cited several in the state that
had received foreign invest-
ment. The campaign alleged
that such investments could
compromise the security of
the state’s energy generation.
Mr. LoParo said his group
thought the issue was fair game
during the campaign, including
in an ad that warned: “Don’t
sign the petition allowing China
to control Ohio’s power.”
The ads sparked a com-
plaint from Chinese-American
groups. In a letter to the attor-
ney general, the groups called
the ads xenophobic.
Angela Pruitt, a spokes-
woman for FirstEnergy Solu-
tions, declined to comment on
the allegations about tactics
used during the signature gath-
ering. She said putting a refer-
endum on the ballot would de-
stabilize the financial position
of the two nuclear plants.Ohio is girding for a nasty
statewide fight over the bail-
out of two nuclear plants to
get even nastier.
A group that opposes a $
billion bailout of two nuclear
plants vowed to continue fight-
ing the measure after missing
a deadline Monday to deliver
enough signatures to put a ref-
erendum on the 2020 ballot.
Others have been counter-
ing with their own petition
drive and a barrage of ads, in-
cluding one warning that the
state’s energy grid could be
taken over by China.
The Ohio Attorney General’s
office is investigating dozens of
complaints related to signature
gathering, according to spokes-
man Dave O’Neil. One complaint
alleges that opponents of the
antinuclear petition drive of-
fered a person gathering signa-
tures at the Greater Columbus
Convention Center this month
BYKRISMAHER
Sparks Fly in Ohio Over Nuclear Plants
The Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Perry, Ohio, one of two plants at the center of the bailout plan.DUSTIN FRANZ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALHeavyToll
Overalltrafficfatalitiesfellin2018,butpedestriandeathsrose.Source: National Highway Traffic Safety AdministrationTrafficfatalities50,010,20,30,40,’95 2000 ’05 ’10 ’15 ’36,
t2.4%Pedestriandeaths6,01,2,3,4,5,’95 2000 ’05 ’10 ’15’6,
s3.4%