The register runs one way: credited to the executive, debited
from everyone else. These are the entries where it runs the other way.
Fibrebond
Graham Walker, Outgoing CEO
Credited to the workforce CR
US$240m
About 15% of the proceeds of a US$1.7bn sale, put into a bonus pool for the 540 full-time staff of a manufacturer in Minden, Louisiana. Roughly US$443,000 each, paid out over five years, weighted so that the longest-serving get the most.
Debited from the owner DR
The money came out of the family's own share of the sale. He rejected the word gift: the sale was only possible, he told NBC News, because of the work the whole team had put in, including through the years when the company was struggling.
Sources: Fortune · WCNC · Good News Network
Patagonia
Yvon Chouinard, Founder
Credited to the workforce CR
US$3b
The whole company. 2% of it — the voting stock — to the Patagonia Purpose Trust, and the other 98% to the Holdfast Collective, a non-profit. Roughly US$100m of profit a year now goes to fighting climate change and protecting undeveloped land.
Debited from the owner DR
The family took no tax deduction for any of it. The Holdfast Collective is a 501(c)(4), which can make unlimited political contributions and to which donations are not deductible — so the structure that made the money most useful was also the one that cost the family most.
Sources: CNBC · Forbes · VOA News
Richer Sounds
Julian Richer, Founder
Credited to the workforce CR
£3.5m
Paid straight to the 522 staff when 60% of the company was transferred to an employee ownership trust — £1,000 for every year served, which averaged about £8,000 a head.
Debited from the owner DR
Control of the company he founded as a teenager, and the price a trade buyer would have paid for it. He took £9.2m from the trust for the 60% stake.
Sources: Forbes · What Hi-Fi? · Blacks Solicitors
Chobani
Hamdi Ulukaya, Founder and CEO
Credited to the workforce CR
10% of the company
Award units to all 2,000 full-time employees, scaled by tenure and role, converting to cash or shares if the company ever floated or sold. Estimates at the time put the average at around US$150,000, with the longest-serving staff above US$1m.
Debited from the owner DR
The stake came out of his own holding in a company he owned privately and did not have to share with anyone.
Sources: The Washington Post · NPR · Forbes
Malden Mills
Aaron Feuerstein, Owner and CEO
Credited to the workforce CR
1,400 jobs, on full pay
Two days after a fire destroyed the factory complex in Lawrence, Massachusetts, he announced that the workforce would be paid in full for 30 days. He extended the wages to 90 days and the benefits to 180, while the mill was rebuilt on the same site rather than moved offshore.
Debited from the owner DR
Insurance money that could have been banked, or taken as profit, or spent rebuilding somewhere cheaper. He did none of those things, and the decision is widely reckoned to have cost the company its financial cushion.
Sources: CBS News Boston · Jewish Telegraphic Agency · The Times of Israel