Fiberbond Company: The sale of a family company in a small town in America changed the lives of hundreds of employees. After running the company for 43 years, the family sold it for 1.7 billion dollars i.e. about Rs 14 thousand crores, but the company owner decided to give a part of the sale proceeds to his employees. After this, 540 employees received a total amount of 24 crore dollars i.e. more than 2 thousand crore rupees, due to which many employees became millionaires overnight.
Company sold after 43 years
This company is Fiberbond, located in Minden city of Louisiana state of America, which manufactures special structures and enclosures for electrical devices. The company was operated by the Walker family for 43 years. Later it was sold to Eaton, a big company in the power management sector. The company’s former CEO Graham Walker placed a special condition before completing the deal. He said that 15 percent of the sale proceeds would be given to the employees, even though the employees did not even have any shares in the company.
One condition changed the lives of employees
Due to this condition added in the company sale agreement, a total of $240 million was distributed to 540 full-time employees. On an average, each employee received approximately 4.43 lakh dollars, which is equivalent to crores of rupees in Indian currency. Employees started receiving this amount from June, however, to get the full amount, employees will have to remain associated with the company for the next five years. At the same time, employees aged 65 years or more were exempted from this condition, due to which many employees could retire immediately. When the employees got information about the bonus, many people were surprised. Some could not believe that they were going to get such a huge amount. Many employees described it as an experience like winning the lottery.
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How to keep employees together
Fiberbond was founded in 1982 by Claude Walker, father of Graham Walker. Initially the company manufactured structures for telephone and electrical devices to be installed along railway lines. In the year 1998, there was a massive fire in the company’s factory, which caused huge losses. After some time, business was also affected due to the dot-com crisis. At one time, about 900 employees used to work in the company, but when the conditions worsened, the number of employees reduced to about 320. Even after this, the Walker family did not abandon the employees even in difficult times and continued to pay salaries even in many difficult circumstances.
Data center business changed picture
A big change for the company came when it invested about $150 million in data center infrastructure. The increasing demand for cloud services during the Covid pandemic in 2020 proved this decision correct. After this, the demand for data center projects and LNG export terminals related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) started increasing. The company benefited from this and recorded an increase of almost 400 percent in its sales in the last five years. In view of the increasing business, many big companies showed interest in purchasing Fiberbond.
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