Moderna CEO made more than $18 million in 2021, could receive golden parachute worth nearly $1 billion

 Moderna is a biotechnology company that was founded in 2010 and develops medicines based on mRNA technology. Stéphane Bancel – who was previously a top executive at pharmaceutical behemoth Eli Lilly and Company and CEO of French biotech company bioMérieux – was hired as CEO of Moderna in 2011.

Moderna went public in 2018 and raised more than $600 million at its initial public offering, making it the biggest biotechnology IPO at the time.

Moderna, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, brought its first product to market in December 2020, when the Food and Drug Administration gave emergency use authorization to Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine.

Moderna sold 807 million doses of the company's COVID-19 vaccine, reported to be worth $17.7 billion – accounting for virtually all of the company's revenue. In 2021, Moderna's total revenue was a whopping $18.5 billion, a major increase from 2020's total revenue of $803 million. Moderna has projected sales of $19 billion for 2022 based on vaccine purchase agreements with governments across the world. 

Moderna could potentially reward its 49-year-old CEO with a gargantuan golden parachute worth nearly $1 billion. Moderna is providing Bancel with an exit package of a whopping $926 million if he is terminated or dismissed because the company is sold or a merger happens.

"The value of Bancel’s so-called change-in-control package has varied as a bulk of it, $922.5 million, is in the biotech company's stock, which has swung widely over the course of the pandemic along with the company’s progress in making a vaccine to fight it," CNBC reported. "Bancel's exit package also includes a cash severance payment of $1.5 million and a bonus of $2.5 million if the company is sold and he's terminated."

The value of Bancel's golden parachute was revealed on Wednesday in Moderna's annual proxy report.

Bancel made $18.2 million in cash, stock, and options in 2021– an increase from $12.9 million compensation in 2020, and more than double his $8.9 million compensation of 2019, according to Barron's.

Moderna also spent an additional $661,000 in personal security for Bancel and his family.

Stéphane Bancel has a net worth of $4.6 billion, according to Forbes.

A CNN report from May revealed: "Covid-19 vaccines have created at least nine new billionaires after shares in companies producing the shots soared."

The list of the new COVID-19 vaccine billionaires includes Bancel, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, senior executives from China's CanSino Biologics, and early investors in Moderna.