BioNTech founder vaults into world rich list on 250% surge

Ugur Sahin reached the milestone after the UK this week approved the use of a Covid-19 vaccine that the German firm created with Pfizer

Ugur Sahin and his wife Ozlem Tureci, co-founders of the German biotechnology company BioNTech. Reuters

The co-founder of BioNTech has joined the world’s 500 richest people after the UK this week approved the use of a Covid-19 vaccine that the German firm created with Pfizer.

BioNTech’s shares have jumped almost 10 per cent since Monday and are up more than 250 per cent for the year. Ugur Sahin is now the 493rd richest person with a net worth of $5.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Dr Sahin didn’t respond to a request for comment made through BioNTech’s press office.

The UK was the first western country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine, clearing the way for the deployment of a shot that Pfizer and BioNTech have said is 95 per cent effective in preventing illness.

BioNTech is still waiting on a decision from the US Food and Drug Administration and European Union regulators.

The German firm previously focused on fighting cancer, but Dr Sahin and his wife Ozlem Tureci - BioNTech’s chief medical officer - sharpened their focus on Covid-19 in January after reading a troubling study about the spread of the virus in a family that had visited Wuhan, China. Their results are a validation of the new type of drug that they have spent their careers chasing.

“It could open the pharmaceutical field for a new class of molecules,” Dr Sahin said last month.

Turkish-born scientist Mr Sahin is the sole shareholder of a German firm that controls an 18 per cent stake in BioNTech, which raised $150 million from its US initial public offering last year, filings show.

He has joined Germany’s Struengmann brothers among the world’s 500 richest. They own about half of BioNTech and backed the previous biotech venture that Dr Sahin set up with his wife, Ganymed Pharmaceuticals.

Headquarters of the German biotechnology company BioNTech in Mainz, Germany. AP

The race to produce a Covid-19 vaccine has also lifted a group of investors at BioNTech’s closest rival, Moderna.

Shares of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company have surged more than 650 per cent this year, making billionaires of some early investors, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Bob Langer and Harvard University professor Tim Springer, as well as chief executive Stephane Bancel, who is now worth $4.7bn.