Billionaire biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong is exploring a Los Angeles Times sale less than three years after buying it for $ 500 million, people familiar with the matter said.
The move comes as an abrupt aspect for Mr Soon-Shiong, who had promised to restore stability to the West Coast news institution and has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the newspaper in an effort to turn it around.
When Mr. Soon-Shiong acquired the Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and a handful of weekly newspapers from Tribune Publishing Co., then called Trunk Inc., in 2018, he received a great uproar from media after years of turbulence and reduced publications. At the time, he said the sale represented the beginning of a new era and that he intended to do what was necessary to make the business viable for the next 100 years.
Since then, he has been dissatisfied with the slow expansion of its digital audience by the news organization and its substantial losses, according to people. He has also come to believe more and more that the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune – known together as the California Times company – would be better served if they were part of a larger media group, they said.
Soon-Shiong has focused heavily on the efforts of his immunotherapy company to develop a Covid-19 vaccine and has had little time to devote to the Times, people familiar with the matter said. “Covid took him back to the lab,” one of the people said.