Fuad El-Hibri and EBS Trading

Fuad El-Hibri and Emergent BioSolutions are handing our bonuses

Fuad El-Hibri and Emergent BioSolutions are handing our bonuses

Bonus may be a bad word right now — but not for a biotech that is actually making money. Alongside minimal pay raises, Emergent BioSolutions Inc. execs received bonuses in 2008 that increased anywhere from 5 percent to 43 percent from their 2007 bonuses. Fuad El-Hibri, chief executive officer and chairman of the Rockville company, got the lowest increase, but the highest bonus at $323,250. The highest increase was doled out to Kyle Keese, senior vice president of manufacturing operations, who took home a $96,460 bonus for 2008. Though, at least one manager’s perk wasn’t quite so perky last year. Robert Kramer, who stepped down in January as head of Emergent’s manufacturing subsidiary and instead will manage a contract that the company hopes to nail with the federal government this year, got a 48 percent decrease in his bonus from 2007, bringing his 2008 figure to $78,815. While Emergent is one of the few biotechs netting a profit, its numbers did dip slightly from 2007 to 2008 — by 2 percent of revenue and 10 percent of profits — because of fewer or delayed shipments of its anthrax vaccine to the federal government. But whereas other biotechs have been shaving down their work forces, Emergent added people in 2008, up to 587 people from 560 in 2007.

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