Moderna struggles with the idea of a shareholder wanting the pharma group to unveil its Covid-19 vaccine to developing countries and explain why its prices are so high due to the amount of support the government has received.
Legal & General Investment Management, London’s chief financial officer, said Moderna’s shareholders should be aware of how the U.S. government’s funding for Covid vaccines affects “access to such resources, such as pricing”.
After receiving less than $ 2.5bn from the US government, Moderna has sent the vaccine to many rich countries and has not transferred its expertise to low- or middle-income manufacturers, LGIM said.
Modern fighting idea to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Companies often argue with their shareholders in the SEC and often win.
Separately, Oxfam has partnered with other fundraisers to lodge complaints with Moderna and Pfizer to ask companies to do more to share vaccine expertise. For Moderna, all the shareholding ideas represent the first business requests the company has faced since its public appearance in 2018.
Moderna from Massachusetts did not respond to a request for comment.
Moderna has been pressured to lower its prices and expand its operations in developing countries. Elizabeth Warren, Democratic senator in Massachusetts, adauza Financial Times last month that Moderna and Pfizer needed to “do more to address the growing disparities in access to Covid-19 vaccines worldwide, including the development of global vaccine production”.
The pair are said to have made more than $ 93bn next year selling the Covid vaccine alone.
Moderna is in a very unusual position because she developed her vaccine in collaboration with the US National Institutes of Health. Barney Graham, one of the NIH scientists involved in the development, told FT earlier this year that the government’s work in developing the vaccine could be completed. give “interest” at Moderna when it comes to setting prices.
But Moderna has strongly denied the allegations, and has recently issued a public statement rejecting the idea that Graham and two other government scientists had developed the vaccine.
In its petition to the SEC to block LGIM’s shareholding, Moderna said it was already planning to publish by February 15 more information on setting vaccine prices. “The company believes it will do very well [LGIM] proposal before submitting its proxy [voting] equipment, ”it said.
LGIM has already written its proposals to Eli Lilly and Gilead Sciences to share corporate positions with senior executives. In 2019, LGIM also submitted a proposal to BP on emissions.
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