Factory Boss Gifts $240 Million in Surprise Bonuses to Workers

A Louisiana factory boss rewarded his long-term employees with six-figure bonuses after selling his company for $1.7 billion.

Graham Walker (second from right) with some of his team | Firebond

In a standout moment of a corporate boss being generous to employees, the Wall Street Journal reports that Graham Walker, CEO of Fibrebond, earmarked 15 percent of the proceeds of the sale of his family business for his 540 full-time staff, ensuring that each would receive payments averaging $443,000. Some long standing staff members received a lot more.

Founded in Minden, Louisiana, by Graham and his family, Fibrebond started out with making enclosures for electrical equipment. Over the years the company went through all sorts of ups and downs, but in the early 2000s the company adjusted course and started to build infrastructure for data centers, including enclosures for power equipment. Happily, this decision became a huge commercial success from 2020 after data demand for cloud computing during the Covid lockdown surged, followed by the AI boom.

Employees who spoke to the WSJ described the bonuses as life changing. Recipients used the initial instalments of their five-year payout to pay down debts and mortgages, contribute to college and retirement funds, and even open businesses of their own.

Terms of Firebrand's sale to the power management company Eaton, stipulated that $240 million would be distributed to Walker’s employees over the span of five years provided they remained at the company, with the size of individual payouts determined by their tenure.

“Close to a quarter-billion dollars in employees’ hands felt fair,” Walker told the Journal. He explained that the payment reflected his gratitude toward employees who had stayed with the company over a tumultuous few decades, during which it navigated several nearly terminal challenges including a factory fire in 1998 and an exodus of customers following the dot-com bubble bursting in 2000.