Since I mentioned The Los Angeles Times just a short while ago, this news item caught my eye:
The owner of the Los Angeles Times has reached a deal to sell the paper to biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, bringing the paper back under local control for the first time in nearly two decades.
Tronc, the Chicago-based company formerly known as Tribune Publishing, will sell the Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune and the rest of its California News Group to Soon-Shiong for $500 million in cash, plus the assumption of $90 million in pension liabilities, the company announced Wednesday morning.
The $500 million price tag is twice what Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid for the Washington Post when he bought that paper in 2013, and more than seven times what Red Sox owner John Henry paid for the Boston Globe that same year. [CNN]
What this might bring for the Times remains to be seen. CNN adds a biographical note on the new owner:
The major question now is what the Soon-Shiong era will mean for the beleaguered paper. Known as “the world’s richest doctor,” Soon-Shiong is a controversial figure in the healthcare industry and on Wall Street. Shares of his biotech companies, NantHealth and NantKwest, have both fallen by more than 80% since he took them public. An initiative he launched to eradicate cancer by 2020 was described by STAT News as “an elaborate marketing tool” for his businesses. (Through a spokeswoman, Soon-Shiong responded to that story in two statements, saying the initiative had made “remarkable progress.”)
Well. Could be interesting. Does he have the necessary capital to pump into the business in order to make it profitable enough? I’ve never heard of this guy before.
