A company in China called Sunny Optical Technology did something unusual - they gave their employees - factory workers, cleaners, and cooks - the small percentage shares. Now hundreds of these people are millionaires.
"The previously unreported value of their holdings has ballooned as Sunny Optical’s shares surged more than 9,500 percent since June 2008, trouncing even Netflix Inc.’s 7,500 percent gain," according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Sunny Optical was founded over 30 years ago by a former appliance-factory workerWang Wenjian, who started the company in Yuyao, east coast of China. He had merely a high school diploma and less than $10,000 of cash that he borrowed.
Sunny Optical is now a $22 billion behemoth that supplies lenses to the giants like Samsung and Xiaomi. Growing demand for cameras in smartphones, cars, and drones fueled a decade-long streak of rising profits at the company, helping propel the shares’ dizzying rally, Bloomberg reports.
In the 1990s Wang took started distributing stakes beyond top management and later organizing the holdings into a trust that now has about 400 holders and owns 35 percent of the Hong Kong-listed company.
"Possibly Sunny Optical is the most outstanding example regarding the wealth generated for the workers," wrote Louis Putterman, Brown University professor who specializes in the Chinese economy, according to Bloomberg.
"When money gathers, people will be apart; when money is scattered, people will gather," Wang wrote in a book on Sunny Optical’s history published last year. Wang said, "In our firm, a helper handing food to you in the canteen may as well be a billionaire. (...) We did one thing well -- building a team and keeping them growing."
Source: bloomberg.com
