• Boston.com April 15, 2004 Employees get bonus from eMachines sale

Employees of eMachines Inc., which sells low-end computers, got a $72.5 million piece of the pie when the company was sold last month to Gateway Inc. Founder Lap Shun "John" Hui distributed more than half of the profit from the $290 million cash and stock sale, announced in January. The 140 employees, ranging from managers to warehouse workers, received checks equal to at least 30 percent of their annual salaries, and some executives got nearly $100,000. About two dozen executives split 12.5 million shares of stock. "Typically, an owner would keep everything. But John felt very strongly that every employee should be rewarded and share in the transaction," said Wayne Inouye, former eMachines chief executive who took over the same role at Gateway. Hui, who kept about $57 million in profit, said rewarding workers was smart business. "I'm not a generous guy. I end up with the most," he told The Orange County Register for a story in Thursday editions. "It's just a formula that works. I take care of my employees." "I bumped into a lot of happy people when I handed out the checks," said Adam Andersen, former eMachines chief operating officer and now chief administrative officer at Gateway. Two friends of Hui's provided a nearly $100 million bonus to employees in 1996 when Kingston Technology Co. in Fountain Valley was sold. David Sun and John Tu gave their employees at the computer memory-chip firm about 7 percent of the $1.5 billion sale price.

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