Consulting veteran Shyam Gidumal appointed as COO of WeWork

Consulting veteran Shyam Gidumal has been appointed as the new COO of co-working company WeWork.

Embattled co-working platform WeWork has appointed the latest member to its revamped C-suite; Shyam Gidumal, who takes over as the company’s new chief operating officer. Most recently with Ernst & Young, Gidumal brings over 35 years of consulting and operations leadership experience to the role, including earlier career stints at BCG in the US and with AlixPartners in Asia.

“Shyam has been an invaluable partner to me for many years during critical business inflection points, helping to focus operations and organisations including at Vornado, and repositioning companies for effective growth,” said newly installed WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani, who was appointed at the beginning of the month. “We look forward to continuing to add to the WeWork senior leadership team.”

Plucked out of Harvard Business School in 1983, Gidumal would spend over a decade with Boston Consulting Group in Las Angeles, rising to partner and joining the firm’s board of directors. After leading a number of turnarounds over the following decade, Gidumal later joined AlixPartners as a managing director across Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and New Delhi. In 2011 he joined EY in New York.

Remaining with the Big Four until his mandatory retirement last year, Gidumal as a partner most recently headed up the firm’s Consumer Products and Retail Industry segment, having earlier led its Operations Transactions practice. In addition, Gidumal led EY’s ‘Shareholder Activism’ practice at the global level, an offering he created which helped corporations prepare for and interact with activist shareholders.

“I’ve spent my entire career managing or advising companies, often through key transformational endeavors, to help position them for long-term success,” said Gidumal, citing among other examples the restructurings performed at Acterna and Worldcom while working at AlixPartners in Asia. “My role has been to constructively manage businesses for long-term success and sustainability.

“I am thrilled to join WeWork in its exciting next chapter, working across all levels of the business on our path to profitable growth,” Gidumal added, with Mathrani stating that his appointment as a partner in managing the business would provide a “significant boon” to WeWork’s operations and executive team. Both men, however, will have their work cut out in steadying the ship.

Founded only the ten years ago, WeWork, which describes itself as the world’s leading space-as-a-service platform, has since grown to control real estate in 140 cities across 38 countries worldwide – including its latest country expansion into Taiwan. Indeed, December was the company’s busiest month yet for new buildings, despite its $1.5 billion bailout from Softbank only being completed a month prior.