Exiting CEO left each employee at his family-owned company a $443,000 gift—but they have to stay 5 more years to get all of it

When Graham Walker agreed to sell Fibrebond Corp., the Louisiana manufacturing company his father founded, he made sure the deal would transform the lives of its 540 full-time employees as much as his own. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the 46-year-old CEO carved out a roughly $240 million bonus pool from the $1.7 billion sale to power-management giant Eaton, an amount that works out to an average of $443,000 per worker.

Walker insisted that 15% of the sale proceeds be reserved for employees...