In Los Angeles, a billionaire doctor takes on an ailing newspaper
He was perhaps the least famous billionaire in a city brimming with wealthy celebrities.
But Patrick Soon-Shiong, 65, a doctor who turned a cancer drug into a multibillion-dollar biotech empire, emerged on Wednesday as a major figure in Los Angeles life with his surprise $500 million purchase of The Los Angeles Times and its sister newspaper, The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Soon-Shiong has a long — and sometimes checkered — history in the medical field going back to the 1990s, but has kept a relatively low profile in the political, cultural and philanthropic doings of the city. He now faces the challenge of stabilising a newspaper engulfed by turmoil and diminished in resources.
His is an immigrant’s tale that captures the story of Los Angeles today: A Chinese doctor who was raised in South Africa before coming to Los Angeles to make his fortune. He is worth an estimated $8 billion, and has been called the richest man in Los Angeles. He is a part owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, having bought Magic Johnson’s 4.5 per cent stake in the team in 2010 before setting his sights on what friends said he viewed as the ultimate prize of social cachet: the 136-year-old, award-winning newspaper that has long displayed the city’s ambitions to the world.
Soon-Shiong was already a major shareholder at the newspaper, joining the board of Tribune Publishing, which later became known as Tronc, in May 2016. In purchasing The Times, he has accomplished what eluded some of the most established business leaders here who have flirted for years with buying it — Eli Broad, David Geffen and Austin Beutner among them.
Unlike Broad, who can regularly be seen in the Founders Room at the Los Angeles Opera, or Beutner, a deputy mayor who ran briefly for mayor, or Geffen, who recently donated $150 million to rebuild the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Soon-Shiong has left a relatively light footprint on the city’s civic life.
Still, Soon-Shiong can be spotted in his courtside seats at Lakers games, and often invites players to his huge compound in Brentwood to shoot hoops in his underground gymnasium. “To this day, basketball is the thing that keeps me sane,” he said in an interview in 2016 for an oral history project at the Smithsonian.
He has a reputation among business leaders as being polite, charming, and brilliant, particularly when talking about the latest advances in cancer treatment. But he is also known as an aggressive selfpromoter and an impulsive businessman.
The announcement of the purchase was met with relief in a newsroom that had come to believe any owner would be better than Tronc.
Late Wednesday, Soon-Shiong sent a note to the Times staff, calling his decision “deeply personal.” He added, “As someone who grew up in apartheid South Africa, I understand the role that journalism needs to play in a free society.”
The Timesunder Soon-Shiong will no longer be part of a public company, allowing the paper to avoid financial scrutiny as it tries to combat industrywide financial challenges. Soon-Shiong’s deep pockets could also help prop up a larger newsroom and more ambitious, farreaching journalism.
As part of his deal for the paper, SoonShiong will assume $90 million in pension liabilities from Tronc.
Soon-Shiong also brings a new set of uncertainties to an already anxious newsroom. It is not clear if he will be a relatively hands-off owner, like Jeff Bezos at The Washington Post, or if he will be more meddlesome, like Sheldon Adelson at The Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Friends said that Soon-Shiong, who did not respond to a request for an interview, took note of what he saw as a vacancy in the halls of Los Angeles power when Broad announced at the end of the year that he was retiring, ending a career of high-profile philanthropy and civic involvement that helped define modern Los Angeles.
“I believe he cares deeply about Los Angeles and our community,” said Beutner, who lives next door to SoonShiong, “and understands the role The Los Angeles Timesplays as a civic conscience.”
Soon-Shiong has been an active philanthropist, giving money to various medical causes and helping to reopen Martin Luther King Jr Community Hospital, which serves south Los Angeles and had been closed because of poor performance.