Officials of US pharmaceutical companies turned the Covid-19 disaster into a worldwide furor into an opportunity. He took a stake in the shares just before the company’s announcement of making the corona vaccine and sold it when the market went up. It earned a strong profit of $ 1 billion (7.5 thousand crore rupees) within a few days.
According to the New York Times, Vaxart, a small drug company in southern San Francisco, announced on June 26 that the Corona vaccine it was working on had been included by the US government in its flagship scheme, Warp Speed.
Just prior to this disclosure, top executives of the company took a stake in equity shares. As soon as this news came to market, the company’s shares started climbing and the value of equity shares of top executives increased by six times to reach $ 200 million. The price of one share of Vaxart was 30 cents in January, rising 10 times to $ 3.66 in April.
The stakes were not just Vaxart, but the top executives of 11 companies. Most of the companies in this are very small, whose future of profit and loss was not visible. But just before the announcement of getting help from the government and joining the race to make vaccines, these officials made a profit of around 7.5 thousand crores by buying shares.
Vaxart had said that the US government has included its Covid-19 vaccine in its flagship scheme. The truth is somewhat different from this. Vazart’s vaccine was for trials on monkeys. It neither received help from the US government nor was included in the flagship scheme. Despite this, the company’s chief executive Andrew Floru made a big profit by selling the $ 4.3 million stock he bought in June for $ 28 million.
Ben Wakana, executive director of the US-based nonprofit Patient for Affordable Drugs, says buying and selling stock at the right time is the right thing. But many investors and experts say that these executives earned profits based on the company’s internal news. This step will hurt the confidence of the pharma industry and investors. In this era of epidemic, every citizen is contributing while these companies insisted on making profit.
