Moderna’s top executives and early investors have become astoundingly rich, even after last week’s pounding, which illustrated just how transitory stock market wealth can sometimes be. Cofounder Robert Langer holds a stake worth nearly $2.8 billion, while CEO Stephane Bancel controls $5.3 billion of stock, plus options that were valued at $1.2 billion at the end of last year.
But the new wealth doesn’t stop there. A significant swath of Moderna‘s 2,400 employees owns shares through its stock purchase plan. The company also has issued options and share grants to employees and others that have a combined paper profit of $8 billion.
“The number of millionaires [at Moderna], at least on paper, has got to be through the roof,” said Tony Mullin, a biotech human resources executive with knowledge of compensation levels throughout the industry.
Mullin witnessed the stock wealth effect in action when his former company, Watertown’s Pandion Therapeutics, was acquired by Merck & Co. in April for $1.85 billion. “Lots of people got instantly rich,” he said.
This bonanza is happening at tech and biotech companies across the local landscape: Vertex, HubSpot, Ginkgo Bioworks, Toast, Wayfair, and DraftKings, just to name a few of the big winners. The companies and their employees, many of them in their 30s and 40s, are flush with cash. Their spending is filtering through the economy, boosting everything from housing prices to sales of luxe cars, watches, and wines.
To cite one conspicuous example: Sales at European Watch Company have grown 25 percent a year over the past several years, according to Joshua Ganjei, general manager of the Newbury Street store, where the most expensive timepieces can easily top $100,000. “Demand is in uncharted territory,” he said.
The benefits of this gold rush, however, have not been evenly distributed. They never are. More on this extremely important caveat in a bit.
Massachusetts has long been one of the richest states based on incomes, as well as by a broader measure of wealth, called net worth, that includes stocks and bonds, real estate, pensions, and privately owned businesses. The government doesn’t break down net worth at the state level, but the country as a whole has grown richer over the past decade thanks to rising stock prices and home values.
US household net worth reached $134 trillion in June, up 22 percent since the final three months of 2019, according to the most recent Federal Reserve data. That stretch includes the brief recession and bear market last year caused by the pandemic, as well as several rounds of federal relief payments.
Stocks, as tracked by the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, gained 34 percent in the past year, and single-family home prices, both in Massachusetts and nationally, increased about 15 percent, data from Zillow show.
People tend to spend more when financial markets are doing well; they feel richer, even if they haven’t cashed out yet.
“The stock market has always…
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