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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.’
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.’