The CEO of Moderna has been given a 50 percent pay raise after he cashed in $400million in stock – despite the company facing backlash for rising the COVID-19 shot from $26 to $130.
Stephane Bancel, 50, received a merit raise last year of around 50 percent, raising it to $1.5million. His target cash bonus was also raised, according to the Washington Post.
Bancel’s stock also went up nearly $2billion, despite him owning around $3billion to begin with. He said he will donate the stock sale to charity. His target stock raised 67 percent in 2021.
The CEO’s heavier pockets come as the company faces massive backlash for rising their jab’s cost quintuple, taking it from $26 to $130. The shot is estimated to cost just $1.18 to make, representing a 10,000 percent markup.
Senator Bernie Sanders blamed the company recently for the price markup, saying: ‘In the pharmaceutical industry today, we are looking at an unprecedented level of corporate greed, and that is certainly true with Moderna.’
Stephane Bancel, 50, received a merit raise last year of around 50 percent, raising it to $1.5million. His target cash bonus was also raised
Bancel’s stock also went up nearly $2billion, despite him owning around $3billion to begin with. He said he will donate the stock sale to charity. His target stock raised 67 percent in 2021
The company – which turned an estimated $39billion in profit last year – benefitted from a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer-funded support package for designing and testing its COVID-19 shot as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed.
Bancel told DailyMail.com in January: ‘It’s [the price] going up a little bit because the previous price was massively discounted… we got help from the US Government.
‘When we did the first contract with the US, we proposed an offer to them [with] a big discount.’
He added: ‘In the US it’s $26 now. That was the discounted price, it’s going to go up. Pfizer said they’re going to price it between $110 and $130.
‘We’d want to be the same ballpark as that.’
Pfizer was heavily criticized when it announced in October plans to raise the price of its shot to $130 later this year.
Moderna had previously considered raising the commercial price to between $82 and $100 per dose.
The CEO’s heavier pockets come as the company faces massive backlash for rising their jab’s cost quintuple, taking it from $26 to $130. The shot is estimated to cost just $1.18 to make, representing a 10,000 percent markup.
Covid vaccines have been free to Americans regardless of insurance status during the pandemic.
The pandemic made billionaires out of Bancel, as well as, two co-founding board members and the company argues Bancel’s merit pay increase was ‘appropriate in light of the increased scope of increasingly global responsibility for Moderna’s executives,’ according to the Washington Post.
In addition to his hefty salary, Moderna spent around $1million on security because he experiences a ‘heighten threat’ level due to being connected to the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Post.
The company struck gold during the pandemic, increasing their profit margins 300 percent, bringing in a whopping $18.5million in 2021.
Moderna’s board is also one of only five where with three directors bringing in more than $1billion in stock.
Despite the company’s profit margins about to rise due to the higher priced dose, Bancel, who joined Moderna as the CEO in 2011, claimed he took a pay cut to join the pharmaceutical tech company at the time.
‘I took a risk on an untested medical technology when the rate of failure in the pharmaceutical industry is around 90 percent,’ he wrote in March 2023.
The CEO currently lives in a $6million home in Boston, where the company is based
Two years into his tenure, he received $4.5million in stock that he had the ability to exercise at 99 cents per piece. By 2021, his few million in stocks rose to around a $1billion estimated worth, according to the Post.
‘Moderna has provided my family with financial security the likes of which I never imagined or, frankly, sought,’ he said in 2022.
He donated the sale profit – $176million – to charity and donated another $76million this year.
Moderna largely pays its executives in stocks that they earn over time, which has drawn criticism.
Glass Lewis, a shareholder advisory firm, criticized Moderna for bumping up Bancel’s pay without tying it to performance goals.
However, the company argued that the executives are only rewarded when shareholders are. When its stock dropped 29 percent in March, Bancel reportedly only received $302million, whereas when the stock rose nearly 150 percent the year prior, his pay package was worth around $800million, according to the Post.