Kodak
Hey, remember when a huge government contract was recently awarded to an anachronistic film company? You may want to sit down - there might have been some shadiness around that deal.
George Karfunkel, who chairs the board at Kodak, decided to donate three million shares of his stock to an 11-month old synagogue of which he is President on the day the Kodak stock price peaked. Given that day's range, the shares were worth somewhere between $52.5-180M, which Mr Karfunkel may now deduct from his taxes as a charitable contribution.
So he's going to pay $19-67M less than in taxes this year all for donating stock that was only worth $6M before that federal letter was announced. This means he locked in $13-61M worth of personal gains and as President of the synagogue, he still gets to control what happens to the stock, totally tax-free this time of course!
Nothing to see here. Back to work, plebeians.
Moderna
First off, we apologize. We are sick of talking about this company, but the hits just keep coming.
This time, it turns out back in February the President of Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston wrote an op-ed critical of drug pricing laws titled "Medical innovation system under assault". She conveniently omitted the fact that she was sitting on the board at Moderna at the time, receiving some juicy stock options.
But wait, there's more. She still sits on the board at Medtronic making a a paltry $200k/yr plus stock options for that onerous gig. All in addition to her $2.6M salary as hospital President. Pretty outrageous that any hospital is letting its president sit on drug and medical device company boards. Clear conflict of interest.
But sure, drug pricing laws are the problem.