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Billionaire biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong plans to sell The Los Angeles Times less than three years after he bought it for $ 500 million, people familiar with the matter said.
The move marks a sudden about-face for Mr Soon-Shiong, who had vowed to restore stability to the West Coast news institution and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the newspaper in an attempt to turn the tide. .
When Mr. Soon-Shiong acquired The Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, and a handful of weeklies from Tribune Publishing Co., then called Tronc Inc., in 2018, he was greeted with great fanfare by staff and officials. media watchers after years of unrest and downsizing of publications. At the time, he said the sale represented the start of a new era and that he intended to do whatever it takes to make the business viable for the next 100 years.
He has since become dissatisfied with the news organization’s slow expansion of his digital audience and its substantial losses, people said. He also increasingly came to believe 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 larger media group. they declared.
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 got him back to the lab,” one of the people said.
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