Net Worth: $19.1 B
LAST YEAR: $20.4 B
CHANGE: -6%
AGE: 70
RESIDENCE: Brentwood
SOURCE OF WEALTH: Health care, investments, media
THE MONEY: Another rough year for Soon-Shiong, as his net worth declined 6% for the second straight year. The value of his public company holdings plunged, led by a 60% drop in biopharma company ImmunityBio Inc. and a 72% drop in health tech company NantHealth Inc. Other public company holdings, including Zoom Video Communications and solar tech company Heliogen Inc., experienced similar drops. Gains in his private investments partly offset these plunges, including an investment pool jump-started by the sale of Abraxis Bioscience for $3.8 billion in 2010 and the $4.6 billion sale in 2008 of his drug business APP Pharmaceuticals. In 2019, Soon-Shiong received a $710 million cash payout when Celgene — the company that bought Abraxis Bioscience — was sold to Bristol Myers Squibb. His portfolio took a hit in 2020 when he lost tens of millions of dollars from the bankruptcy of Verity Health System, into which he had invested more than $300 million.
THE BUZZ: Soon-Shiong’s immunotherapy company, ImmunityBio Inc., finally yielded positive news in May with the announcement it would submit its first biologic drug – aimed at treating certain types of bladder cancer – to the Food and Drug Administration for evaluation. Meanwhile, health tech firm NantHealth moved its headquarters from El Segundo to Morrisville, North Carolina. Mixed news from his main media holding, the Los Angeles Times. On the plus side, the paper racked up its fifth Pulitzer Prize since Soon-Shiong purchased it in mid-2018. But the paper’s management faced criticism from former investigative reporter Paul Pringle, who alleged in a book published earlier this year that Times editors sat on a story about the misconduct of former USC Keck School of Medicine Dean Carmen Puliafito because of the paper’s close ties to the university. The former editors refuted the claims, saying the story was delayed because it needed more sourcing and work; after it ran, the story won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Soon-Shiong saw little personal satisfaction this past year from his 4.5% stake in the Los Angeles Lakers, as the basketball team had an unexpectedly bad season and didn’t even come close to making the playoffs. A native of South Africa, Soon-Shiong received a medical degree from the University of Witwatersrand and was the first intern of Chinese descent at Johannesburg General Hospital during the apartheid era. He came to the United States to train as a surgeon at UCLA. Soon-Shiong pioneered therapies for diabetes and cancer, including the drug Abraxane to treat several types of cancers, which became the basis for his company Abraxis BioScience. After the 2008 sale of APP Pharmaceuticals, Soon-Shiong and his wife, Michelle Chan, formed the Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation and in 2010 were among the first group of signatories to the Giving Pledge, committing to giving away more than half of their wealth to philanthropic or charitable causes.
