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华尔街日报Louisiana CEO Gives Away $240 Million in Employee Bonuses After Selling His Company —'Some Spent It On Day One, Maybe Even Night Number One'
After nearly three decades on the job, Lesia Key expected a handshake or maybe a plaque. Instead, she got something that made her cry on the spot: a sealed envelope containing life-changing money. Her boss, Graham Walker, had just sold the company they both worked for—Fibrebond—for $1.7 billion, and he wasn't walking away alone. He was taking 540 full-time employees with him, straight to the bank.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Walker carved out 15% of the proceeds—roughly $240 million—as bonuses for the team that helped keep the Minden, Louisiana-based manufacturer alive through bankruptcies, recessions, and even a factory fire. "Some spent it on day one, maybe even night number one," Walker told the Journal. "Ultimately, it's their decision, good or bad."
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Key used her bonus to wipe out her mortgage and open a clothing boutique, finally escaping the paycheck-to-paycheck grind. She started at Fibrebond in 1995, earning $5.35 an hour while raising three kids and cleaning houses on the side. "I can live now," she said. "I'm grateful."
Walker's payout plan was generous—but not unprecedented. In 2015, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya made headlines when he gave employees shares worth up to 10% of the company ahead of a potential IPO. Then there's Mark Cuban, who famously made 91 employees at Broadcast.com instant millionaires when he sold the company to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion.
Walker, however, did it without offering stock—these were straight-up retention bonuses, contingent on staying five more years. For workers under 65, that meant committing to the company through the transition to new ownership.
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Walker's reasoning? "It's more than 10%," he joked, when asked why he chose 15%. But sentiment ran deeper. "We don't often see good things here," he told the Journal, referring to the town of Minden, which has lost jobs and people for decades. The sale to Eaton, a multinational power-management company, was his shot to reverse the trend.
Fibrebond's story is steeped in grit. Founded in 1982 by Walker's father Claud, the company hit rock bottom more than once—its factory burned down in 1998, it was nearly wiped out after the dot-com bust, and it struggled to gain traction in new markets. Graham and his brother dug it out of debt, pivoted to high-end data infrastructure, and rode the cloud-computing wave all the way to the top. As AI and data centers boomed, so did demand for Fibrebond's power enclosures. Sales jumped nearly 400% in five years.
But Walker never forgot the people who stuck by him during the lean years. "Everyone pulls for each other," said Hector Moreno, a business-development executive who used his bonus to take 25 family members to Cancún, Mexico. Others paid off college tuition, bought new cars, or finally retired—like 67-year-old Hong "TT" Blackwell, who was relieved to learn the five-year requirement didn't apply to her age group. "I said ‘Praise the Lord!'" she told The Journal. "I started crying and jumping."
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Walker, 46, is stepping away from the company at year's end. He's asking employees to send him updates about how their bonuses change their lives—now and decades from now. "I hope I'm 80 years old and get an email about how it's impacted someone," he said.
In a world where company sales often leave rank-and-file workers with nothing but a new name on their pay stub, Walker's approach bucks the trend. And for Minden—where Walmart is one of the few major employers—it's more than a feel-good story. It's proof that sometimes, loyalty really does pay off.
Image: Shutterstock