The $40-billion life sciences market in Los Angeles could soon get a boost from Singapore financier Finian Tan.
The Vickers Venture Partners’ chairman – famous for parties held at his sprawling penthouse overlooking the Asian city-state – announced he planned to move to L.A. early next year and spend some $230 million in private venture capital, according to a spokeswoman.
Thirty percent of those funds will be invested in China; 30 percent in Southeast Asia and India; and 40 percent would be invested in the U.S.
That means $92 million specifically aimed at high-tech companies in New York and California, including potential investments in L.A. biosciences, Tan said.
“LA is increasingly becoming a hotspot for startups,” he said in an email to the Business Journal. “Good ideas have never been a monopoly of the Bay Area. But the ecosystem there attracted many startups. With the internet, people can now start their companies anywhere in the world. As a result, LA is attracting more than its fair share. The weather and lifestyle are hard to beat.”
Tan, who worked in the past for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Credit Suisse First Boston, made his biggest bones investing early in China-based search giant Baidu Inc., now worth more than $60 billion.
His Vickers firm, which he co-founded in 2005, has sunk $364 million into 34 companies in total, with a current portfolio value of $2.2 billion. One major investment is in Samumed, a San Diego-based regenerative biomedicine firm now valued at $12 billion.
He’s done well. The net value of Vickers’ fourth fund has increased 485 percent – the best performance worldwide of all funds launched in 2012, according to Bloomberg.
“Most VCs play safe,” Tan told the news agency. “I’ve always been radical. For us, it’s all about home runs.”
Return to Roots
What is now Adventist Health White Memorial opened as a storefront medical clinic in Boyle Heights more than a century ago.
The 353-bed medical center has now returned to its roots by opening a community health clinic for low-income families.
The $4.2 million White Memorial Community Health Center, which opened this summer just outside the main hospital, was feted last week during an official grand opening.
The 22,000-square-foot clinic will not only offer medical and dental services for thousands of members of the largely Latino-American community near the hospital, officials said. They said the center could reduce costly patient visits to the White Memorial emergency room.
“Most of our patients are children and almost all are covered by Medi-Cal,” said Carl E. Coan, chief executive of the nonprofit health center. “Uninsured adults will be screened using a sliding scale based on income and family size. We will not turn any patient away for his or her inability to pay.”
The new clinic at the corner of Caesar Chavez Avenue and State Street features nine doctors, including seven pediatricians, a pediatric nurse practitioner, a dentist and a clinical social worker. The clinic provides medical care and health education and targets local health problems from obesity to pre-diabetes.
It is also the latest in a range of hospital-based health clinics to have opened since the Affordable Care Act expanded Medi-Cal coverage, hospital industry representatives said. Such clinics serve patients who can’t find doctors who accept Medi-Cal and who would otherwise head to hospital emergency rooms for care.
“It’s a definite trend, not just clinics but urgent care, both on and off campus,” said Jennifer Bayer, vice president of external affairs for the Hospital Association of Southern California.
Saint John’s Celebrates 75
Another Los Angeles-area hospital milestone was heralded over the weekend during Providence Saint John’s 75th Anniversary Gala Celebration.
The Saturday night gala, hosted by the Saint John’s Health Center Foundation, was expected to draw 650 guests to 3Labs in Culver City and raise $1.4 million for Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica.
This year’s honorary event committee included such Hollywood notables as Julie Andrews, Jennifer Beals, and Annette Bening and husband Warren Beatty.
Foundation Chief Executive Robert O. Klein said it was “one of the biggest fundraising events in Saint John’s history.”
Saint John’s Hospital was opened on Oct. 25, 1942 by the Catholic Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas. During the baby boom after World War II, the then 89-bed hospital with 35 bassinets came to be called “Maternity home by the sea.”
Staff reporter Dana Bartholomew can be reached at [email protected] or 323-556-8333.
