Entwistle & Cappucci LLP Announces It Has Filed a Securities Class Action Against Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE: EBS)

June 3, 2021

Entwistle & Cappucci LLP (“Entwistle & Cappucci” or “E&C”) today announced that the firm has filed a securities class action lawsuit on behalf of investors that purchased Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (“Emergent” or the “Company”) (NYSE:  EBS) common stock from April 24, 2020 through April 16, 2021, inclusive.  A copy of the complaint is available at:  www.entwistle-law.com.   Institutions and individuals that invested in Emergent common stock may contact E&C for additional information concerning the litigation and to discuss potential strategies for the recovery of any losses.

The action arises from Emergent’s pervasive quality control problems at the Company’s Bayview COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing facility in Baltimore, Maryland that culminated in the destruction of up to 100 million COVID-19 Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccine doses.

The complaint alleges, based on documents recently made public, that numerous statements issued by Emergent concerning its manufacturing processes, capabilities, quality control procedures and status as a purported leader in the biopharmaceutical industry were materially false and misleading.

• First, an internal audit conducted in June 2020 by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals found two “Major” quality control deficiencies, including “deficient” contamination controls and that the Company failed to conform to basic industry standards;

 

• Second, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) inspections of Emergent’s Baltimore facility conducted both prior to and following the Company’s award of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing contracts notified the Company of a “series of quality control shortcomings” including the “fail[ure] to ensure that electronic data” was “protected from deletion or manipulation,” “carelessness in the handling of rejected materials” and failure to “follow proper testing and lab procedures;” and

 

• Third, Dr. Carlo de Notaristefani, an Operation Warp Speed Manufacturing & Supply Chain adviser charged with overseeing the production of COVID-19 vaccines on behalf of the federal government, issued a draft report in June 2020 highlighting Emergent’s key manufacturing risk as the “remediation of the compliance gaps identified by the FDA inspection held in April 2020.” Notaristefani further noted that the Company’s staffing was “inadequate to enable the Company to manufacture at the required rate” and Emergent would need to expend “significant resources” and “strengthen” quality controls to meet manufacturing scale-up and roll-out deadlines.

Emergent allegedly admitted to the FDA – but not the investing public – that the Company was plagued with known manufacturing problems, including that the “sudden scale-up” had “strained the capacity” of the Company’s COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing facility.

When these facts became public through a series of partial corrective disclosures, the price of Emergent’s common stock declined significantly, eliminating over $1.5 billion in market capitalization.

If you invested in Emergent BioSolutions common stock, please feel free to contact attorneys Robert N. Cappucci or Joshua K. Porter at 212-894-7200, or via e-mail at [email protected] or [email protected].