>"Oh, they'll just walk away from the leases. Each lease is owned by a different subsidiary. That subsidiary will just file bankruptcy. Problem solved. They'll

>"Oh, they'll just walk away from the leases. Each lease is owned by a different subsidiary. That subsidiary will just file bankruptcy. Problem solved. They'll just cut the losers, and turn up the dial on the profitable buildings." "Each lease is owned by a different subsidiary" doesn't help you that much against the lessors, they'll either charge you more or demand signed guarantees from the parent corporation. Counter-parties are not idiots, generally speaking. There's no free lunch here. How the structure helps is by protecting against other creditors that may arise out of operating the physical business in a way that may inadvertently generate legal liability. Since this is a real estate business, I'll go with a classic example - there's a spill on the floor, someone slips and falls and sues the people running the building. This litigant can generally only collect from any insurance policy and the subsidiary running the building - in order to go after WeWork's assets, they'd have to convince a court to pierce the corporate veil, and that's significantly more difficult.