There is a difference if it is the sole/main owner of the company that also owns the real estate holding company, or if it is the CEO who's doing it to funnel some cash to himself.
I think the legit thing to do would be to have three companies. SuperCo Holdings, SuperCo RealEstate and SuperCo Operations. SuperCo Holdings owns both the others 100% and investors buy the Holdings company.
You are assuming he bought the building with company resources. If he spent his own money/took on the liability personally, that is his business.
Yeah, you gotta be extra careful that it's not divergent from company interests (right place, right price). But this isn't shady unless there is some reason it harms the company.
> You are assuming he bought the building with company resources. If he spent his own money/took on the liability personally, that is his business.
It would be his business if he rented out his property to an organization that he can't sign contracts for. But as it stands, he is transferring money from an account he only partially owns (but fully controls, with legal obligations to his co-owners which he seems to be breaking) to an account that he owns fully. It's a sneaky way to give himself a raise that is easier to get past the board. The article even cites WeWork with "approved by the board or an independent committee", which implies that not all of those arrangements happened worth explicit board approval. How he got into the possession of the means by which the transfer from controlled-but-only-partially-owned to owned was facilitated is an unrelated topic.
I think the legit thing to do would be to have three companies. SuperCo Holdings, SuperCo RealEstate and SuperCo Operations. SuperCo Holdings owns both the others 100% and investors buy the Holdings company.