From Jeff Childers again

Moderna fired its brand-new replacement CFO yesterday, or he immediately quit, depending on whether you believe US media or foreign media, after only one day on the job. The official story seems to be that he’s “under investigation” and Moderna just realized it. The Wall Street Journal’s story is headlined, “Hot Job Market, Strong Demand for CFOs Strain Due Diligence.” See, it was just a due diligence failure. There’s nothing to see here, move along.

The WSJ article’s sub-head explains, “Moderna CFO Jorge Gomez started the job and exited the next day amid an investigation by a former employer, highlighting the challenges some companies now face in hiring.” He exited. The Journal’s story does not use the word “quit” or “resigned” anywhere. Maybe “exited” means the same thing as “quit” but it is definitely ambiguous.

Nor were there any details in the WSJ story about the “investigation” disclosed by Gomez’s former employer on Tuesday — before he started working at Moderna — which raises questions about whether it is in fact the real reason for his hasty “exit.” One analyst interviewed for the Journal story observed, “it looks like … those events happened and they just let Gomez start the job. To have him start and finish a day after, to me, is worse reputationally for a company than to say Mr. Gomez is not going to start his tenure as CFO because there is an ongoing investigation.”

Indeed. And, consider this: Nothing in the details we that have from the Journal — or any other media report — would be inconsistent with the other possibility: that Gomez came in for his first day of work and was so appalled by what he’d found, and perhaps by what he realized he hadn’t been told during recruitment, that he sprinted for the exit door. He exited all right; the revolving door in front of Moderna HQ was spinning so fast it practically went back in time.

But a UK Times article about the story has a different take, with its article headlined “Golden Goodbye After One Day’s Work at Moderna for Jorge Gomez.” It starts its story explicitly stating that Gomez QUIT: “A top executive at Moderna, the Covid-19 vaccine maker, has quit after only one day, taking one year’s salary of £700,000 with him.”

So. He DID quit. And he got paid.

The UK Times also reported that the “investigation” announced by Gomez’s prior employer doesn’t even mention him at all, that it was based only on unidentified allegations “submitted by current and former employees of the company.” US media may need to be a little more careful not to defame Mr. Gomez.

As a lawyer, I have questions about the Journal’s “official” narrative. If the problem was really undisclosed financial improprieties during his previous employment, why did Mr. Gomez quit instead of being fired for cause? And why would he get a giant severance package? You don’t usually pay big severance packages to employees who got their job under false pretenses, and only worked one day. Presumably, that odd setup is why the Wall Street Journal speculates without evidence that Moderna failed to conduct “due diligence,” suggesting Moderna should have looked into it more.

But usually the burden is on the executive to disclose material issues that might affect their employer. This all seems very ‘sus’ to me, as the kids say.

Moderna stock (MRNA) traded at $368.51 at its peak on November 29th, but closed yesterday at $123.43.