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Hours after Pfizer, Moderna names its own new CFO with dental, healthcare and auto chops

April 11, 2022 11:39 AM EDT

Roughly two hours after Pfizer named its new CFO, its Covid-19 vaccine competitor Moderna chalked up its own new CFO with a résumé steeped in healthcare, dental equipment and auto manufacturing.

Moderna’s current CFO, David Meline, “has decided to retire,” the Spikevax maker said Monday as Jorge Gomez takes over the company’s finances on May 9. For 21 months, Meline led the financial duties at the Flagship-founded biotech during its massive rise as one of the key players in the world’s pandemic response. He’ll remain as a consultant for the transition.

David Meline

Gomez comes to the Cambridge, MA biotech with recent chops in leading the finances of dental equipment maker Dentsply Sirona, which he joined in August 2019. He appears to have just a weekend break between jobs: Dentsply said he departs May 6.

During his tenure at Dentsply, the $10.5 billion market cap company’s stock $XRAY went on a ride from $52 per share to a low of $38, up to $67.51 last April and back down to $48 today.

He’ll join a biotech with a market cap magnitudes larger, at $63.6 billion, thanks largely to Moderna’s success at delivering hundreds of millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses and work building up partnerships across the globe with the likes of IAVI, federal governments and industry peers AstraZeneca, Merck and Vertex.

“As we grow and scale the company globally, Jorge’s experience leading the financial functions of multinational healthcare companies will be an asset to our team. Jorge’s passion for sustainability and ESG aligns closely with Moderna’s vision to make corporate responsibility a critical part of who we are and what we do,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in the news release. Moderna’s ESG day is slated for Nov. 10, the company said in February.

Gomez steps into a 3,000 employee-company with $17.6 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments at the end of 2021.

Like Pfizer’s new CFO, Lowe’s finance chief David Denton, Gomez’s résumé has a recent gap in pharma work. Prior to the dental equipment maker, Gomez was CFO for nearly two years at Cardinal Health. During his nearly 14-year career at Cardinal, Gomez worked up to the top CFO post after serving as CFO of the medical segment from 2015 to 2017 and finance chief of the pharma segment from 2012 to 2015.

Before joining Cardinal Health in 2006, he was in various positions at General Motors — across New York, Singapore, Belgium and Brazil — for the preceding nine years.

Gomez is also on the boards of water technology provider Xylem and video game therapeutics maker Pear Therapeutics.

https://endpts.com/hours-after-pfizer-moderna-names-its-own-new-cfo-with-dental-healthcare-and-auto-chops/