5th Exec Joins Moderna Billionaire Club as Stock Price Soars — Despite Growing Number of Injury Reports
For the fifth time since the onset of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, the skyrocketing price of Moderna stock has produced a billionaire, but the vaccine is coming under increasing scrutiny for possible links to blood clots and heart inflammation.
Moderna President Dr. Stephen Hoge is the company’s latest shareholder and executive to join the “three-comma-club” — with an estimated $1.1 billion fortune.
Other club members are CEO Stéphane Bancel, chairman and cofounder of Noubar Afeyan, founding investor Timothy Springer and cofounder Robert Langer, Forbes reported.
Hoge, 45, joined Moderna in 2012 and owns 0.4% of Moderna stock — worth $365 million — in addition to about $685 million in options. Like the other Moderna shareholders, Hoge frequently sells stock — including $65.5 million worth (pre-tax) between March 2020 and April 2021.
Hoge is one of more than 40 new billionaires who made 10-figure fortunes with companies involved in the “battle against COVID.”
Activists say this wealth generation highlights the stark inequality that has resulted from the pandemic, CNN reported.
“These billionaires are the human face of the huge profits many pharmaceutical corporations are making from the monopoly they hold on these vaccines,” Anne Marriott, Oxfam’s health policy manager, said in a statement. “These vaccines were funded by public money and should be first and foremost a global public good, not a private profit opportunity.”
Since February 2020, Moderna’s share price has gained more than 700%.