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Fuad Al-Hibri, whose biotech company won billions of dollars in government contracts to produce a vaccine against anthrax but stumbled in 2021 after being hired to produce Covid vaccines, was forced to discard the equivalent of 75 million contaminated doses, died. April 23, at her home in Potomac, Md. He was 64 years old.
His death was announced in a statement made by his family. A representative of the family said the cause was pancreatic cancer.
Mr. El-Hibri’s Maryland-based company, Emergent BioSolutions, was an obscure player in the government contracting world, but it was an influential company: It lobbied extensively and made campaign contributions to achieve a near-monopoly over the production of an anthrax vaccine. in the early 2000s. The contract accounted for almost half of the budget for the Strategic National Stock, a medical reserve held in the event of crises such as a biological weapon attack or pandemic.
Although the relationship is subject to occasional scrutiny – A thorough investigation by The New York Times In March 2021—also making Mr. El-Hibri’s company the seemingly obvious choice to produce the Covid vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. Emergency received a $628 million contract from the federal government in 2020.
But in fact, Emergent was not at all prepared for this imposing task. Despite being part of a government program to rapidly ramp up vaccine production in an emergency, it had yet to demonstrate such capacity when it began distributing Covid vaccines in early 2021.
In March of that year, the company announced that due to worker error, approximately 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine were contaminated and had to be discarded. Nationwide production has been temporarily halted, creating a political headache for the Biden administration, which hopes to be used smoothly to quell vaccine hesitancy.
Congress launched an investigation, and in May Mr. El-Hibri, chairman of Emergent’s board, and Robert G. Kramer, the company’s CEO, testified before the House Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus.
While both men were defending the company and talking about the unprecedented challenge presented by their mission, Mr. Al-Hibri regretted the company’s failures.
“The cross-contamination thing is unacceptable,” he said, “period.”
About 60 million additional doses were found to be contaminated in June.
Fuad El-Hibri was born on March 2, 1958 in Hildesheim, Germany, as the son of housewife Elizabeth (Trunk) El-Hibri and engineer and entrepreneur İbrahim El-Hibri. He grew up in Lebanon and Germany and graduated from Stanford University in 1980 with a degree in economics. He earned a master’s degree in public and private management from the Yale School of Management in 1982.
Mr. Al-Hibri started his career at Citicorp in Saudi Arabia and later worked for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton in Indonesia. After returning to the United States, he started a business helping national telecom companies upgrade their networks in Russia, Venezuela, and El Salvador.
In the 1990s, he advised the Saudi Arabian government on efforts to purchase millions of doses of anthrax vaccine. This experience sowed the seed of the idea that became Emergent BioSolutions.
He co-founded the company, originally called BioPort, in 1998. He and his associates, including William J. Crowe, a former admiral, soon won a bid to purchase a disused government laboratory in Lansing, Michigan, and raise it to production. Anthrax vaccines for the US military.
The company changed its name to Emergent BioSolutions in 2004. It opened to the public in 2006.
Although mostly focused on one product and one customer (it also produced Narcan, which is used to treat opioid overdose), Emergent prospered under Mr. El-Hibri’s leadership, reporting $1.5 billion in revenue in 2020.
The company’s financial success can be attributed, in part, to its aggressive efforts to earn a large chunk of its strategic stock budget, as research by The Times has found. Many experts think this is a big pile, given the relatively low risk of a widespread anthrax attack and the option of using inexpensive antibiotics for many cases.
“Purchases must be based on careful assessments by government officials of how best to save lives,” the inquiry said, “but many were also impacted by Emergency’s profitability.”
Mr. Al-Hibri and his wife were campaign donors; Between 2018 and 2021, they gave nearly $1 million, mostly to Republican candidates. An employee political action committee at Emergent awarded another $1.4 million during the same period.
These connections proved crucial in the fall of 2020, when Emergency was one of two facilities contracted to produce Covid vaccines. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Al-Hibri liquidated $42 million of stock and stock options.
After the manufacturing debacle at Emergent was made public, the company faced an uproar from shareholders, including a lawsuit accusing it of engaging in securities fraud by falsely claiming that it was ready to manufacture vaccines to boost the value of its shares.
Mr. El-Hibri stepped down as head of Emergency BioSolutions on April 1.
He is survived by his wife, Nancy (Grunenwald) Al-Hibri; her mother; his brother Samir; sister Yasmin El-Hibri Gibellini; his daughters Faiza and Yusra Al-Hibri; his son Karim; and three grandchildren.
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