Expensive flash layoff
Moderna fires new chief financial officer after two days – and pays $700,000 in severance
Jorge Gomez took up his job as chief financial officer of vaccine maker Moderna on Monday. On Wednesday he was rid of him again. Despite this, he receives a full annual salary. After all: He waives further bonuses.
Work two days and collect a six-figure salary for it – many employees would probably accept that enthusiastically. However, Jorge Gomez had imagined things a little differently when he took over the job as chief financial officer of the US vaccine developer Moderna.
Gomez only took up the post on Monday, and the company fired him again on Wednesday. The reason is a financial affair at his previous employer Dentsply Sirona, about which investigations became public on Tuesday.
Despite the rather short interlude, Moderna pays Gomez $700,000 in compensation. This corresponds to the basic salary for a full twelve months. After all, Gomez has to forego his signing bonus and will not receive any further bonus payments.
Ex-employer investigation
The severance pay is still met with incomprehension among observers. “Nobody deserves severance pay after three days on the job, the company should be recovering the cost of hiring them,” Nell Minow of consulting firm ValueEdge Advisors told the Financial Times. But she also sees a glaring failure by Moderna’s corporate governance. On the one hand, she should never have offered him the job, and on the other hand, she shouldn’t have designed the contract in such a way that Gomez was entitled to such a high severance payment.
Jacob Frenkel, a former investigator for the Securities and Exchange Commission, also wonders in the FT how one can hire a manager whose area of responsibility is currently running an investigation into financial irregularities.
At Dentsply Sirona, the world’s largest manufacturer of dental products, internal investigations into irregularities in connection with incentive payments have been ongoing since March. Apparently not a trifle: In April, the company fired its CEO Don Casey without giving a reason. Moderna, on the other hand, says it only learned about the investigations this week after Dentsply Sirona made them public.
Now Moderna has to look for a new chief financial officer. Until he is found, predecessor David Meline, who actually wanted to retire, will continue. In any case, he is not doing so badly as CFO of the company. For the 2022 fiscal year, Moderna expects revenues of $21 billion for its corona vaccine alone.
Sources: Financial Times / Reuters / Moderna