How did the tiny batteries powering your AirPods build a $1.9 billion fortune? We'll let our Iain Martin tell you
Thirteen years ago, no one wanted to buy a money-losing hearing-aid battery maker. No one but Michael Tojner. Against all odds, Austria’s “Mr. 300%” turned that $40 million investment into the cornerstone of a 10-figure fortune . Now he has to fend off the copycats.conference room on the outskirts of the medieval Bavarian city of Nördlingen, the Austrian billionaire Michael Tojner is toying with a tiny battery. The coin-sized device is a technological wonder.
“I was the only bidder left for Varta because nobody dared to buy Varta,” Tojner says. “They sold me a company with negative cash flow. But everything was supposed be better because we had an Apple contract. After one year, one small battery exploded. We lost the Apple contract. The company almost went bust. The bank was nervous, and I was in the restructuring department because we couldn’t pay our interest.
The 1,400-room Schönbrunn Palace was for 300 years the summer residence of Austria’s ruling Habsburg family and is now one of the most famous landmarks on Vienna’s tourist trail. It was also the start of Tojner’s entrepreneurial career. In 1991, while studying law and business management at Vienna University of Economics, he secured the rights to run an ice cream stand inside the palace grounds.
“Michael is to money what Mozart is to music,” says Manfred Bodner, who launched several ventures with Tojner, including Bwin, and was best man at his wedding. “He loves it, and has a hell of a lot of fun making more of it.” The microbattery business also has some shadows hanging over it, with reports that Samsung and other Varta clients have begun using batteries from Chinese battery makers Eve Energy and MIC-Power, rattling analysts and investors. Varta is fighting back with legal action, filing a patent infringement suit in Texas in February. But technology battles are almost never won in court.
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