Billionaire biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong is exploring a Los Angeles Times sale less than three years after he bought it for $ 500 million, people familiar with the matter said.
The move marks a sudden turn for Mr. Soon-Shiong, who had promised to restore the stability of the West Coast news institution and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the newspaper in an effort to turn it around.
When Mr. Soon-Shiong acquired the Times, San Diego Union-Tribune and a handful of weekly items from Tribune Publishing Co., then called Tronc Inc., in 2018, he was greeted with great fanfare by staff and observers. the average after years of turmoil and discounts on publications. At the time, he said the sale was the beginning of a new era and that he intended to do what was necessary to make the business viable in the next 100 years.
Since then, he has become dissatisfied with the slow expansion of the news organization’s digital audience and its substantial losses, people said. He also came to believe more and more that the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune – known together as the California Times – would be better served if they were part of a media group. bigger, they said.
Mr. Soon-Shiong focused heavily on his immunotherapy company’s efforts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine and had little time to devote to the Times, people familiar with the matter said. “Covid really brought him back to the lab,” said one of the men.