Florian von der Mülbe sold the thickest package. On June 21, 2021, the co-founder of the Tübingen vaccine developer Curevac sold more than half a million shares for just under $ 34 million. That goes out documents filed by Mülbe with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Three other managers, Chief Financial Officer Pierre Kemula, Chief Technology Officer Mariola Fotin-Mleczek and Head of Development Ulrike Gnad-Vogt, also cashed in. First had the magazine Business Insider reported on these deals, which are remarkably close to business development: In the past few weeks, the bad news at Curevac has accumulated. While millions of doses of the mRNA preparation from competitors Biontech and Moderna have already been inoculated, Curevac is falling behind – of all things, the company in which the federal government invested for 300 million euros through the state bank KfW.
During this time Florian von der Mülbe sold 545 091 shares with a market value of 33.8 million dollars, Pierre Kemula 33 269 shares with a value of 2.1 million dollars, Mariola Fotin-Mleczek 22 577 with a value of 1.4 million dollars and Ulrike Gnad-Vogt 22,575 shares for $ 1.4 million. It is difficult to estimate how much executives have made from selling their shares. Co-founder of Mülbe, who has been there from the start, should have made a profit in any case. As in many companies, shares are part of the remuneration of the executive board. When Curevac went public, the board members were able to convert part of their acquired rights to shares into real paper.
The conversion takes place when milestones are reached, such as the IPO or the completion of clinical studies. According to the company, the entitlement to shares, so-called virtual shares, is, however, significantly higher than the shares already converted by the managers according to the annual report. A company spokeswoman contradicted calculations according to which Kemula, Fotin-Mleczek and Gnad-Vogt had almost completely sold their shares. “The majority of the claims are simply not yet converted,” said the spokeswoman.
A few days before the share sales, on June 16 after the stock market closed in the USA, where the stock corporation registered in the Netherlands is listed, Curevac announced interim results for clinical study 2b / 3 with its vaccine candidate CVnCoV. According to this, in a study with 40,000 test persons and in the context of “at least 13 virus variants”, it was only 47 percent effective. As a result, the share price crashed. The final study result at the end of June was also hardly better.
The company rejects any connection between such news and the stock sales. “There is no logical causality between the transactions described and current company developments at Curevac,” said a company spokeswoman. In addition, no share sales had taken place prior to the publication of the phase 2b / 3 data. This statement is supposed to mean: If the board members really wanted to maximize their profits, they would have done it before the price crash. “Our board members are still completely convinced of Curevac and our technology and are devoting all their energy to the further development of our company,” assures the company spokeswoman.
The executives made their sales as a private person and reported them to the SEC in accordance with the law, says Curevac justiar Marco Rau. The dates were set months in advance as part of a so-called 10b5-1 plan. Such stock trading plans would be concluded between three partners, “precisely to avoid insider trading”: between managers, the company and a bank.