What Would You Do With an Extra $2 Billion? This Startup Is Handing It Out to Employees
Juul just got a $2 billion dividend payment from its new investor Altria. It decided to give that money to employees.
What would you do with an extra $1.3 million? The 1,500 employees of e-cigarette maker Juul are going to get the chance to answer that question. Although the company has made no public announcement, insiders told CNBC that the company had received a one-time dividend payment of $2 billion as part of an investment deal with Altria (the parent company of Philip Morris), which is spending $12.8 billion to buy 35 percent of Juul's shares. The sources inside Juul, who remain anonymous, say that the company decided to divide that bonus among its employees.
It's a brilliant, brilliant move. To begin with, the company just turned into the employer everyone wants to work for. Commentators on CNBC wryly noted that the rest of us are all in the wrong business. That's a big asset in these days of historically low unemployment, with companies battling for talent, especially tech talent. If it weren't for the talent wars and the difficulty in hiring skilled employees these days, it's a safe bet that Juul would have decided that increased R&D or a new manufacturing facility or some other asset for the business would be the best use of its $2 billion windfall.
Speaking of Juul's tech talent, it seems likely that they, along with the company's senior executives, might get the best bonuses under this deal. The anonymous sources report that the $2 billion will be divided up according to longevity with the company and how much stock they own, among other factors. The Juul website says that every employee is a "stakeholder" in the company, but with stock options a popular incentive in Silicon Valley, my guess is that the most highly skilled, most hard-to-recruit employees are also the ones with the most stock....MORE
