The director of Moderna will donate most of his fortune

The CEO of vaccine maker Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, has said he plans to donate most of the family's fortune, focusing his philanthropy on issues such as health care and global food security.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
27 May 2022 Friday 00:35
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The director of Moderna will donate most of his fortune

The CEO of vaccine maker Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, has said he plans to donate most of the family's fortune, focusing his philanthropy on issues such as health care and global food security.

"We have told our children that they will receive a good education, we take care of that," Bancel said in an interview with Bloomberg on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “They will keep the family house, but we are going to give the rest away,” he specified.

Bancel, 49, said this week that he plans to exercise some of his Moderna stock options over the next 12 months and sell the shares, donating the proceeds. That could generate around 355 million dollars (331 million euros) that would go to charity, according to what he said.

The Moderna executive has an estimated net worth of $4.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Bancel has a 1.36% stake in Moderna, after reducing its stake by about a sixth since the end of the first quarter of last year. Shares of the Covid vaccine maker soared to a high of nearly $500 last August before losing value amid concerns about whether vaccine orders would keep up that strong pace. The entire biotech sector has also fallen during that time period.

The executive director advanced that he is also interested in doing more philanthropic works related to climate change. He has invested in green-oriented companies and has reported a stake in nuclear fusion power start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

Bancel explained, on the other hand, that his teenage daughter convinced him to become a vegetarian by pointing out the impact on the planet that meat consumption has.