WeWork plans to lay off nearly a third of global staff

Office-sharing startup WeWork is planning to cut as many as 4,000 jobs as a part of a turnaround plan put in place by top shareholder Japan's SoftBank Group after it took control of the company this week, Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

The job cut will amount to just under a third of WeWork's global workforce, and about 1,000 of the cuts will hit employees such as janitorial staff, the report said, citing people with direct knowledge of the plans.

SoftBank agreed to spend more than $10 billion (£7.76 billion) to take over WeWork on Tuesday, giving a near $1.7 billion payoff to the startup's co-founder Adam Neumann to relinquish control.

WeWork was not immediately available for comment.