Meet The 50 Doctors, Scientists And Healthcare Entrepreneurs Who Became Pandemic Billionaires In 2020 | Forbes - Giacomo Tognini:
December 23, 2020 - "Nearly a year after the first case of Covid-19 was reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, the world could be nearing the beginning of the end of a pandemic that has killed more than 1.7 million people. Vaccination for Covid-19 is underway in the United States and the United Kingdom, and promising antibody treatments could help doctors fight back against the disease more effectively. Tied to those breakthroughs: a host of new billionaires who have emerged in 2020, their fortunes propelled by a stock market surge as investors flocked to companies involved in the development of vaccines, treatments, medical devices and everything in between.
"Altogether, Forbes found 50 new billionaires in the healthcare sector in 2020. The most notable newcomers of the year are the scientists behind the two most successful vaccines for the coronavirus — one developed by Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech, the other by Massachusetts-based Moderna — who have seen their net worths skyrocket since January: Uğur Şahin and Stéphane Bancel. Virtually unknown at the outset of 2020, both men are now billionaires several times over. BioNTech CEO Şahin, who cofounded the firm with Özlem Türeci, his wife and the firm’s chief medical officer — she owns no shares in the company — is now worth $4.2 billion; his French counterpart at Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, has a $4.1 billion fortune. Moderna’s meteoric rise also produced two more billionaires among its earliest investors, Harvard professor Timothy Springer and MIT scientist Robert Langer. Those vaccines will require billions of glass vials to safely transport them — enter Italy’s Sergio Stevanato, a new billionaire and the majority shareholder in the privately-owned Stevanato Group, which is making glass vials for several dozen vaccine efforts around the world.
"It’s not just vaccines: companies developing antibody treatments and drugs to help doctors fight the virus have also benefited from the market frenzy. Carl Hansen, the CEO of Canadian biotech outfit AbCellera, is now worth $2.9 billion after his company went public on December 11, fueled by the Food and Drug Administration’s approval last month of its antibody treatment developed with pharma giant Eli Lilly. Even the firms working behind the scenes to help larger companies test new drugs and devices have seen their stock prices reach new highs. August Troendle, the founder and CEO of Cincinnati-based contract research firm Medpace, is now worth $1.3 billion thanks to a nearly 70% jump in the company’s shares since the beginning of the year.
"The new moguls hail from 11 different countries, but the majority live in China, the early epicenter of Covid-19, which is now home to nearly three dozen new healthcare billionaires — chief among them is Hu Kun, the chairman of medical device manufacturer Contec Medical Systems, which went public on the Shenzhen stock exchange in August. Contec’s shares have risen nearly 150% since the IPO on the back of strong overseas sales of products ranging from pulse oximeters to pulmonary devices used for checking lung conditions, all of which have become more necessary with the spread of Covid-19 throughout the globe."
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