Moderna’s new CFO departs in first week in job

Moderna’s new chief financial officer has left the company a day after joining the Covid-19 vaccine maker, after his former employer announced it had launched an investigation into financial reporting.

Jorge Gomez was an executive at dental equipment manufacturer Dentsply Sirona, which on Tuesday said it was investigating the company’s use of incentives to sell products to distributors in the third and fourth quarters of 2021.

Dentsply said its board of directors’ audit and finance committee began the probe in March and was investigating allegations that current and former members of senior management directed the use of incentives to achieve “executive compensation targets in 2021”, according to a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Moderna on Wednesday said Gomez had departed “immediately”, following the disclosure of Dentsply’s investigation. Gomez took over as Moderna CFO on Monday, about a month after being named to the position.

Gomez will take with him one year’s salary of $700,000, but will not be eligible for his signing-on bonus.

In April, Dentsply’s board abruptly fired chief executive Donald Casey and removed him from the company’s board, following four years in the role. The company did not give a reason at the time for the termination.

John Groetelaars, a board member who worked as chief executive at medical technology provider Hillrom until it was acquired by Baxter International last year, took over as interim chief executive following Casey’s termination.

Moderna’s former chief financial officer David Meline will return to the role after recently retiring while the vaccine maker searches for a new person to do the job.

Dentsply Sirona and Gomez did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Moderna said it was made aware of the internal investigation at Dentsply yesterday through their public disclosure.

Jacob Frenkel, a former SEC enforcement attorney who now works at Dickinson Wright law firm in Washington, said Moderna’s board had “an important question” to answer.

“How and why did a senior corporate level hire come about with the subject matter of a SEC investigation falling squarely under the authority of that hire?”

Nell Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge Advisers, a firm that advises investors on corporate governance, said the episode represented an “outrageous” failure of corporate governance.

“First, it is a failure of the most basic level of due diligence in offering him the job and second it is a failure of the most basic level of designing his incentive compensation,” she said.

“No one deserves a severance payment after three days in the job; indeed the company should come after him for the costs of hiring him.”

The executive change comes at a time of transition for Moderna, which has generated billions of dollars in profits from sales of its mRNA Covid-19 vaccine and is seeking to increase earnings from other treatments.

Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine is one of the two dominant coronavirus jabs on the market, alongside one made by BioNTech/Pfizer.

Shares in Moderna were down 2.2 per cent in morning trading in New York, while the broader S&P 500 was up 0.4 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.5 per cent.

Additional reporting by Jamie Smyth in New York