Stockholders banking on the Covid injections to line their pockets have very merry news this holiday season as they rake in the returns from a raging bull market on Moderna and Pfizer shares.
Big pharma executives and shareholders saw their wealth skyrocket in the week after Omicron was “discovered,” with eight top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders making a combined $10.3bn, City A.M. reported on 6 December, less than two weeks after Omicron was announced.
The two drug companies manufacture mRNA Covid injections and with Omicron sweeping the world, investors are sweeping the returns into their bank accounts. The eight top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders alone made a combined $10.3 billion.
Pfizer CEO, Albert Bourla, personally made $339,236 on the value of shares he holds in the week after the announcement of Omicron.
Moderna’s CEO, Stephane Bancel, raked in $3.19 million all by himself by selling off 10,000 shares for $319 each on 26 November, the day after Omicron was announced. And just under two weeks later, by 5 December, became more than $1,7 billion richer with the value of his remaining shares rising.
Blackrock investment company made $2.5 billion just in the one week following the Omicron announcement. And Vanguard made a whopping $1.01 billion from its shares in Moderna and $1.5 billion from Pfizer.
All this came within days of the UK government cutting a deal on 2 December with Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna for 114 million doses of injections (54m of Pfizer and 60m of Moderna) securing doses for two years.
At the same time, Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, predicted that booster injections are here to stay. Pfizer and BioNTech released results from an initial lab study on 8 December. In an interview with CNBC Bourla said the preliminary studies were based on a synthetic, lab-created copy of Omicron and real world results were expected in the following two weeks. While results may show that a third injection could fight the variant, Bourla said, “I think we will need a fourth dose.”
