In the midst of Anaergia’s madly clapping remote-working executives was a wiry gentleman wearing glasses and sitting on a swivel-back chair in a modestly decorated home office in San Diego County, Calif.
Viewed from the outside, it is a rather unlikely pivot for the septuagenarian, who initially moved to California post-GE windfall because he liked the weather and wanted to take an unpaid position as a researcher with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.Article content
It proved to be enough, apparently: Zenon’s groundbreaking work with advanced membrane technologies and ultra-filtration techniques would become the gold standard for drinking water purification and wastewater treatment worldwide.Article content It was enough to convince Benedek that maybe he should try to do something. He did. Anaergia was born after he took a shine to UTS Biogastechnik GmbH, a German biogas company that was going bankrupt. He wound up buying it in 2007, taking charge as chief executive, moving to Germany for a spell and working 24/7, just like in the good old days.
GE paid a 55-per-cent per share premium when it bought Zenon for $24 a share. Anaergia’s IPO went for $14 a share and the stock is up to $15 after three weeks of trading.Anaergia recorded $128 million in revenue in 2020, and another $37.4 million in its most recent quarter, but said it has an order backlog of some $2.8 billion.