Vaccine Capitalism: Who is raking in the Profits ?

The Vaccine Billionaires 

Quoted:

"We Had the Vaccine the Whole Time- A So Called Vaccine Awaiting a So Called Pandemic?

 You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines,  had been designed by January 13 /2020. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian generosity that resulted in China’s Yong-Zhen Zhang’s being temporarily forced out of his lab.  

In Massachusetts, the Moderna vaccine design took all of one weekend. It was completed before China had even acknowledged that the disease could be transmitted from human to human"

How much profit will they make from the vaccines this year?

BioNTech/Pfizer: estimated $4 billion profit, after sales of $15 billion. Pfizer says it already has orders for at least $15 billion worth of vaccines, at around $19 a shot. According to the Financial Times, the profit margin could be close to 30% this year. Unashamedly working to maximise profit, Pfizer is reportedly driving a hard bargain when negotiating sales with both richer and poorer countries.

Moderna: estimated $8 billion profit  after sales of $18.4 billion. Moderna says it is on track to produce at least 700 million pre-ordered vaccines in 2021. Moderna’s jabs are the most expensive, between $25 to $37 a shot and the company says the cost of producing its jabs will be as low as 20% of sales.

Who will get the money?

Pfizer/BioNTech: Profits are split 50/50 between the two companies.

Shareholders will receive ‘dividends’ – cash paid out from company profits. Pfizer’s main shareholders are global investment funds: especially Vanguard Group (7.6%), State Street Global Advisors (5%), and BlackRock (4.9%). Run by some of the world’s richest, most powerful people, such as Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, between them this “giant three” control approximately $20 trillion of the world’s assets. Meanwhile, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla made headlines selling £4.2 million of Pfizer shares the day it announced its vaccine worked.

BioNTech is generally presented as a rags-to-riches success story for two immigrant doctors, the husband and wife team of Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci. The vaccine has made them billionaires. But the company’s main owners, who owned around 50% last year, are the biotech investor twins Thomas and Andreas Struengmann. They made their first billions from generic medicine company Hexal they set up in the 1980s, then sold to Novartis in 2005.

Moderna: Shareholders include chairman Noubar Afeyan (14% share at start of pandemic), CEO Stéphane Bancel (9%), and professors Timothy Springer (Harvard) and Robert Langer (MIT). They have suddenly gone from directors of a loss-making company to multi-millionaires. Moderna shares have increased by around 50% since it announced its vaccine success and Bancel in particular has sold off chunks of his holdings in recent months, taking out millions in cash. Moderna listed on the stock exchange in 2018 and its biggest institutional investor is Scottish investment fund Baillie Gifford, which has been buying up more shares recently and now has over 11%. The US giants Vanguard and BlackRock are next, with 5.7% and 4.1% each. One mystery over the Moderna vaccine is if any money will go back to the US government who “co-developed” and funded it.

Oxford/AstraZeneca: AstraZeneca, headquartered in London, is a global megacorp owned by the same big investment funds as Pfizer and others. At the end of 2020 its three biggest owners were BlackRock (7.5%), Wellington Management (5.2%) and Capital Group (4.3%).

According to the Wall Street Journal, Oxford University stands to get 6% of future royalty payments. 24% of those will be passed on to Vaccitech Ltd, a “spinout” private company whose directors include vaccine researchers Professors Gilbert and Hill. They each own around 5% of Vaccitech’s shares. The main shareholder (46%) is an investment company called Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI), set up by the university to channel capital into its spinout businesses. OSI has numerous shareholders besides the university itself – including Google Ventures, Huawei, Chinese pharma company Fosum (which also owns shares in Moderna), the sultanate of Oman, as well as banks and private equity funds.

Article: 

Vaccine Capitalism: A run-down of the huge profits being made from COVID-19 vaccines and Bernay's Style Mass Marketing

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