Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel Deletes Twitter
Account
Getty Stéphane Bancel
in 2007.
Did the Moderna CEO,
Stephane
Bancel, really delete his Twitter
account? Heavy has confirmed that yes, the news circulating on
social
media is accurate. However, according to financial records,
although
Bancel has been selling his Moderna stock regularly, he has not
sold
all of his Moderna stock as other rumors claimed. Here’s what
you
need to know.
Bancel’s Twitter Account, Which Was Once Tagged
by Moderna, Has Been Deleted
The Twitter account @sbancel, which Moderna has
tagged in the past, appears to be deleted. When going to the
account
at twitter.com/sbancel,
a message is returned that reads, “This account doesn’t exist.”
TwitterThe SBancel Twitter account
Of course, it’s important to confirm that a
username actually belongs to the person people claim it does.
Heavy
first was able to confirm this by tracking down a post by
Moderna on
Twitter, which has Twitter’s blue checkmark verification. In
this
post from November 2021, Twitter tagged Bancel’s Twitter account
and wrote, “Congratulations to our CEO, @sbancel, for being
awarded
the Strategist Prize 2020 by @LesEchos for leading Moderna’s
#COVID19 vaccine strategy, deemed as the most relevant
industrial
strategy of the past year.”
Internet Archive Shows Bancel Hasn’t Been Very
Active on Twitter Since April 2019
Heavy went to Internet
Archive to confirm that Bancel had actually used the account in
the
past, and it does appear that Bancel was once active on Twitter
with
the @sbancel account, but had not been on Twitter much since
2019.
Starting
on February 11, the occasional archives showed that the
account
no longer existed. The account wasn’t archived every day,
however,
so it is possible it was deleted before February 11.
The
next most recent archive from
November 2, 2021, reveals that Bancel was once active on
Twitter.
The
account featured a profile picture of Bancel and the bio read
“Moderna CEO. Likes & RTs are not endorsements.” He had
4,377
tweets, 6,396 followers, and was following 16 people at the
time. A
tweet from Moderna was pinned at the top.
However,
it appears that he may not have used Twitter much since April
2019,
according to the November archive, which shows his most recent
retweets being April 2019 articles and tweets.
Internet Archive
Internet
Archive doesn’t show replies to tweets, but it appears that
Bancel
used to be active on Twitter but hadn’t been using it much since
April 2019.
Heavy
also
identified Bancel’s user ID in the source code, to determine if
the
account had simply changed handles.
Searching
https://twitter.com/intent/user?user_id=120730781
revealed that the user ID “120730781” has not been switched to
a
different account name. It simply returns a 404 response.
According
to the archived Twitter bio, Bancel had joined Twitter in March
2010.
Back
in 2016 he was fairly active on Twitter.
Records Show He Has Sold Moderna Stock But
Didn’t
Sell All of His Holdings, as Some Rumors Had Claimed
Per
Nasdaq as of Feb 10 he owns 5.7 million shares directly and
another 16.1 million shares indirectly. Company is
potentially revolutionizing cures for many types of
diseases, and you’re resorting to petty political hatchet
jobs. pic.twitter.com/4UaXu9LeGt