Stéphane Bancel, chief executive of Moderna, had a good year in 2022, exercising stock options that netted him nearly $393 million. The company decided his pay wasn’t good enough.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech, known for its lifesaving coronavirus vaccine, raised his salary last year by 50 percent to $1.5 million and increased his target cash bonus, according to a March securities filing. Bancel, 50, says he is donating the proceeds of stock sales to charity. He owns stock worth at least $2.8 billion and, as of the end of last year, had additional stock-based compensation valued at $1.7 billion.
Moderna emerged from the pandemic as a standout corporate winner, as its vaccine supercharged its stock price and made billionaires of Bancel and two co-founding board members. The firm’s windfall profits have drawn criticism, particularly because it used $1.7 billion in taxpayer funding and assistance from the National Institutes of Health to develop its vaccine. Now, analysts are finding fault with its executive pay and governance, with one influential firm advising shareholders to vote against the company’s compensation plan at its annual meeting on May 3.