Billionaire biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong is investigating a Los Angeles Times sale less than three years after buying it for $ 500 million, people familiar with the case say.
The move marks an abrupt turnaround for Mr Soon-Shiong, who had vowed to restore the stability of the West Coast news agency and has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the newspaper in an attempt to turn it around.
In 2018, Mr. Soon-Shiong published the Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and a handful of Tribune Publishing Co.’s weekly newspapers, then Tronc Inc. named, acquired it after years of upheaval and downsizing in publications. At the time, he said the sale marked the beginning of a new era and that he planned to do whatever it took to make the business viable for the next 100 years.
He has since been displeased with the slow expansion of the news organization’s digital audience and significant losses, the people said. He has also increasingly come to believe that the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune – known collectively as the California Times corporation – would be better served if they were part of a larger media group, they said.
Mr. Soon-Shiong is strongly focused on his immunotherapy company’s efforts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine and has had little time to devote himself to the Times, people familiar with the matter said. “Covid really got him back to the lab,” one of the people said.