Mayday payday at lab

CEO cashed out before vax snafu

The CEO of the Baltimore lab that botched 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine last month sold more than $10 million worth of shares in his company before it disclosed the disastrous mistake.

Robert Kramer, chief executive of Emergent BioSolutions, sold the stocks in January and February — when it was worth nearly twice the $5.5 million it’s pegged at now following news of the bungle that resulted in the trashing of millions of COVID-19 vaccines, securities filings show.

When he devised a trading plan for selling the shares, Kramer, 64, had already weathered problems at the facility last year in which other snafus resulted in the discarding of smaller amounts of AstraZeneca’s and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines.

The lab manufactures vaccines on behalf of drug companies.

Citing a Securities and Exchange Commission rule on trading by company insiders, Emergent spokeswoman Nina DeLorenzo said in a statement that “all of Mr. Kramer’s sales were previously scheduled under 10b5-1 trading plans,” according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the stock sales.

But the company did not respond to questions about whether Kramer was aware of problems in Emergent’s production facilities.

A spokesman for Emergent declined to elaborate Monday.

Despite repeated problems at the facility, Kramer, who was named chief executive in April 2019, was awarded a 51 percent pay increase in 2020, bringing his total compensation to $5.6 million. On top of his $893,000 salary, Kramer received a $1.2 million bonus and $3.5 million in stock awards and options, filings show.

The last time Kramer had sold shares was in 2016, when he and Emergent were sued by investors alleging the company ran up its stock price by making “overly” positive statements about a government contract that would “significantly increase its deliveries” of an Anthrax vaccine.

It later emerged that the feds had decreased deliveries of the vaccine.

The suit was settled in 2018 and Emergent and its executives denied any wrongdoing.