Pfizer CEO Sold 62% of His Stock on Day of Vaccine Reveal

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla cashed in on his company’s coronavirus vaccine breakthrough.

The executive sold more than $5.5 million worth of Pfizer stock on Monday — the same day the drugmaker said its experimental COVID-19 shot was more than 90 percent effective, records show.

The groundbreaking development sent Pfizer’s share price surging as high as $41.99 that day, its highest level in more than a year. Bourla dumped more than 132,000 shares for $41.94 apiece, just five cents shy of that peak, according to a Tuesday securities filing.

Those shares amounted to more than 60 percent of Bourla’s Pfizer stock holdings, the filing shows. He still owns 78,273 shares directly plus another 3,539 that are held indirectly.

The filing says the sale had been arranged in advance under a so-called Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which allows corporate executives to make predetermined stock transactions in compliance with insider trading laws. Bourla adopted the trading plan in August of this year, according to the document.

https://twitter.com/AndySwan/status/1326524413383159814

Bourla — who got more than $15 million in total direct compensation from Pfizer last year, records show — wasn’t the only Pfizer honcho to make a well-timed trade on Monday.

Sally Susman, the Manhattan-based company’s executive vice president and chief corporate affairs officer, dumped more than 43,000 shares to the tune of about $1.8 million, according to another securities filing. The sale was similarly made under a Rule 10b5-1 plan Susman adopted in November 2019, the filing says.

Pfizer did not immediately respond to an email Wednesday morning seeking more details about the transactions.

Pfizer’s blockbuster Monday announcement inspired a broader stock market rally on hopes that the vaccine would help the global economy recover from the deadly coronavirus pandemic. The Dow Jones industrial average soared 834 points to post its best day since June, while Pfizer shares ended the day up about 7.7 percent at $39.20.

The company’s stock price climbed 0.7 percent to $38.95 in premarket trading as of 7:58 a.m. Wednesday following a roughly 1.3 percent loss Tuesday.

Source: New York Post

4 Comments
  1. Julio Cesar Perez says

    Corruption

  2. Saint Jimmy (Russian American) says

    I hope it’s ok to do this but I thought this was an informative post from some poster over at zerohedge called Entertaining1:

    I’ve read a gazillion pharma studies and worked for big pharma.

    The CEO’s stock sale comports exactly with my analysis of the Pfizer announcement. https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-vaccine-candidate-against

    It raised immediate red flags.

    How long was the study? They don’t say. I estimate 60 days, which is not at all thorough. You cannot tell the side effects of a drug in 60 days of trials in a new drug class.

    Second, how do they start a study with 40,000+ subjects and get so few sufferers of the disease? It indicates they are taking patients out of the study in a fishy way.

    Third, the FDA has a history of approving drugs that are obviously bad ideas. The value they provide is less than the possible side effects. For instance, you and your doctor are insane if you get Abilify for depression. How do we know the FDA is not playing a similar sloppy game here? To me, it is obvious they are.

    Fourth, drug trials usually only study healthy people. But this disease really affects the unhealthy with Type II diabetes or heart problems. How does this vaccine help them, the actual sufferers? We know it must be crap–they only want to tell us how much “diversity” was in the study, not how many sick people. That means they screened out the sick people.

    Fifth, vaccines usually work poorly in older people. This disease afflicts old people worst. Forget how many Aborigines or Pueblo lesbians took it. How about old people?

    The ways pharma communicates about drugs is an art form. They don’t leave out details unless they hurt the drug.

  3. Raptar Driver says

    Is it even possible to make a vaccine for a virus that has not been isolated?

    1. Joe Spotfly says

      Yes. A vaccine, any vaccine should be 100% effective against a virus that doesn’t exist.

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