October 20, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
When a company gets acquired, that can be unsettling news for employees. Unexpectedly, the chief executive officer and founder of Torrance, California-based Phenomenex, softened the blow with year-end bonuses that average $16,000 per employee. He’s sharing the $12 million he apparently picked up as a bonus from the sale of the company.
On October 12, Phenomenex, a private company that manufactures and distributes consumables for liquid and gas chromatography, announced that it was being acquired by Danaher Corporation . Phenomenex will continue to operate separately, retaining both its brand, sites and personnel.
“Phenomenex is a widely recognizable brand that we are proud to say is highly respected and well established as providing high-quality consumables to the scientific community worldwide,” said Fasha Mahjoor, Phenomenex’s chief executive officer, in a statement. “Joining Danaher will allow us to maintain the high pace of innovation that our customers and international distributors have come to expect from us. This is our opportunity to further expand our research-and-development activities, benefit our customers with a more diversified product portfolio and reinforce our market leadership.”
And then Mahjoor, only a day or two later, started handing out envelopes to employees that included a thank-you note and the promise of a sizable check at the end of the year when the deal closes. The company has 500 local employees with another 250 globally, and the average amount of each check was $16,000. Checks vary based on positions and longevity.
“Anybody who has been here before January 1, 2015, was included in the program,” Mahjoor told the Daily Breeze. “We have a very high year-to-year retention rate of all our employees.”
Although neither Phenomenex nor Danaher disclosed the price of the deal, Wall Street analyst Ross Muken estimated it at more than $700 million. Since Phenomenex is a private company, revenues are not published, but Muken estimates it brings in approximately $200 million annually.
Phenomenex has a reputation for community giving and outreach, including large donations to the Red Cross and others. According to the company website, it was, “Selected by the Wall Street Journal as an ‘exceptional workplace.’”
The company also sponsors employee activities like river-rafting trips. And Mahjoor has a reputation for performing stunts to raise money for charities. In 2012, he parachuted off the 1,000-feet-tall The Shard skyscraper in London, UK. In 2015 he climbed three of London’s skyscrapers, The Gherkin, The Cheesegrater, and The Walkie-Talkie, to raise over $155,360 for The Outward Bound Trust. He personally donated $51,780 toward his goal.
The company has an extensive list of philanthropic activities, raising money for numerous groups, including Stop Hunger Now, American Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, Nepal Earthquake Disaster Relief and others.
In one Phenomenex publication, Mahjoor is described as, “One part indomitable, two parts unorthodox, and zero parts good looks.”
But it’s clear that his focus on charitable outreach, both personally and through his company, is hard core. As the site reads, “Aside from business savvy, perhaps one of Fasha’s most notorious and unabashed personality traits is his sincere passion for philanthropy. Forcing innocent people to see him dance in a coconut bra to raise awareness for leukemia, screaming like a baby while leaping from skyscrapers to send youth to life-changing wilderness programs and baring his shiny shaved head for months on end to fundraise for global charities have all been part of his pursuit to support causes that mean so much to him.”
