Moderna’s David Meline will step down as finance chief and retire from the company this summer after two years with the vaccine maker, but he’ll stay on as a consultant for another two years, allowing him to fully vest in stock awards set to fully vest by 2024, according to the company, which also revealed it has enlisted another healthcare veteran as a replacement.
Meline will step down as Moderna’s chief financial officer on May 9, but will stay on the board as a consultant until July 2024, according to the business.
As a successor, Moderna has hired Jorge Gomez, an executive vice president of Nasdaq-listed dental equipment company Dentsply Sirona. Gomez is scheduled to start on May 9.
Meline left a five-year term as finance head at biopharmaceutical giant Amgen at the end of 2019, but returned in the spring of 2020 to assist Moderna with the marketing of its Covid-19 vaccine.
Moderna disclosed in a regulatory filing that Meline’s consulting services would allow him to fully vest more than 270,000 stock options awarded to him in July 2020; the options, which vest in quarterly instalments, are set to expire in July 2024 and underpin about $42 million worth of stock on Monday, nearly triple their original value.
Gomez also received a sizable severance payout, including a $700,000 basic salary (up from $621,000 last year), a $4 million new-hire stock package, and prospective yearly rewards of $3 million to $4 million, according to Moderna.
Moderna stock has fallen 67 percent from a record high in August, despite record-breaking profits last quarter; shares were down 1 percent Monday to roughly $159.
