IWG plc was incorporated as "Regus" in 1989 by British businessman Mark Dixon. In 1994, the five-year old company began an international expansion into Latin America and Asia and by 2000, it completed an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange. In 2001 it acquired Stratis Business Centers, a U.S.-based network of franchised business centres, and expanded into the United States market. The company acquired HQ Global Workplaces, a global workplace provider based in the U.S. in 2004. It went on to acquire Laptop Lane, a chain of American airport business centres, later that year. In 2002, the company sold a 58% stake in the UK business to Alchemy Partners in an 11th-hour rescue deal to avoid bankruptcy; the company bought the stake back three years later. In 2003 it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for its U.S. business, which had been struggling in the wake of the dot-com bubble. Less than a year later it took its U.S. business out of Chapter 11 after restructuring, financed by its share of the profitable U.K. business. In June 2008 Businessworld memberships were introduced, a multi-level service which allows users flexible access to services in any Regus location worldwide, intended for clients who travel frequently. The company renegotiated some leasing agreements with property owners in the U.K. to save money, warning owners that the vehicles holding the leases could go into administration ; this angered the British property industry. In 2013 the company opened serviced office spaces in its 100th country, Nepal, its 1,500th centre in Pune, India, and took control of MWB BE, the UK's second largest serviced office provider. In 2014, the company partnered with Swiss automaker Rinspeed to develop the "XchangE" concept automobile based on the Tesla Model S to help people work on the road. Exhibited at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show, the self-driving car has front seats that swivel backwards allowing four business travelers to meet face-to-face without a driver.
Name changes
In October 2008, Regus Group plc became Regus plc. Regus plc was created as a holding company for Regus Group plc, in order to establish the company's headquarters in Luxembourg and its registered office in Jersey. In December 2016, under a scheme of arrangement, the company established a new holding company called IWG plc. , Paris IWG plc acquired Dutch coworking brand Spaces in 2015, expanding to approximately 200 locations in over 40 countries. In 2017, IWG plc went onto acquire rights to Stockholm-based members club No18 under a franchise agreement with plans to expand globally. Late in the year, Canada-based Brookfield Asset Management and Onex approached the company with an informal takeover proposal, but talks collapsed in 2018, resulting in a 23% decrease in share price. In April 2019, IWG plc sold Regus Japan as part of a £320m franchise deal to meeting room rental business TKP Corporation. In November 2019, the company sold its entire Swiss operation for £94m to a joint entity owned by Safra Group and real estate investors P. Peress Group.
Operations, services, and competition
The company provides serviced offices, virtual offices, meeting rooms, and videoconferencing to clients on a contract basis. In the third quarter of 2018, it operated 3,348 locations in over 1,000 towns and cities across more than 120 countries, employing over 10,000 people, and providing services to over 2.5 million individual clients making it the world's largest provider of flexible workspace. The United States is currently IWG’s largest market. As of July 2018, IWG's occupancy rate was 75%. IWG brands include Regus, Spaces, HQ, Signature by Regus, and No18. IWG’s business strategy is focused on providing flexible workspaces as a service. One of the company's principal advantages is that their global network allows customers to coordinate office services across distant locations. 's Denmark headquarters in 2006. Integration services for corporations seating employees at IWG locations involve a diverse set of support operations, such as telecommunications, mail delivery, catering, meeting rooms, lockers, printers, photocopiers, and the like. IWG competes with WeWork in both the large serviced offices and rapidly expanding coworking sectors. WeWork has only a tenth of IWG's locations, but a steeper growth rate and an 82% occupancy rate, gained from attracting a greater number of large organizations as clientele by sustaining losses offset against large but dwindling venture capital investments. WeWork lost more than $4,300 per desk in 2017 while IWG earned a profit of about $500 per desk. WeWork's larger market capitalization valuation is based on its larger growth rate, but its expenses are projected to grow even faster — forcing it to withdraw from an initial public offering it had planned for 2019 — while IWG's solvency is seen by analysts as more certain, according to the Financial Times.
