Net Worth: $19.8 B
LAST YEAR: $19.1 B
CHANGE: 3.7%
AGE: 71
RESIDENCE: Brentwood
SOURCE OF WEALTH: Health care, investments, media
THE MONEY: Wealthiest Angeleno Soon-Shiong’s portfolio recovered some of its mojo over the past year, notching a 3.7% gain after two consecutive years of 6% drops. While the value of most of his public-company holdings dropped yet again, these losses were more than offset by gains in his private investments. The two publicly traded companies he founded and in which he retains majority stakes – biopharma company ImmunityBio Inc. and health tech company NantHealth Inc. – both shed more than 50% of their value for the second straight year, with NantHealth falling into penny stock territory. Other public-company holdings, including local solar tech company Heliogen, also saw sizeable share-price declines. On the positive side, Soon-Shiong’s private investments on net gained about $700 million in value to $5.2 billion. His investment pool was jump-started by the 2008 sale of drug business APP Pharmaceuticals and again by the 2010 sale of Abraxis Bioscience for $3.8 billion. In 2019, Soon-Shiong received a $710 million cash payout when Celgene — the company that bought Abraxis Bioscience — was sold to Bristol Myers Squibb. Rounding out his portfolio are the Los Angeles Times newspaper and a 4.5% stake in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball franchise.
THE BUZZ: Soon-Shiong’s immunotherapy company, ImmunityBio Inc., in April began a Phase 2b clinical trial of what it bills as the first drug ever to combine so-called “killer cell” technology and an adenovirus drug-delivery platform to prevent cancer. Yet the company’s tumbling share price forced Soon-Shiong to pour in another $100 million-plus, on top of hundreds of millions of dollars he previously put in. His main media asset, the Los Angeles Times, won two Pulitzer Prizes this spring. One of those was for the paper’s coverage of secret tapes of three Los Angeles City Councilmembers in a closed-door meeting on redistricting; one of those attendees, City Council President Nury Martinez, resigned within days of the Times story. Just a few weeks after the Pulitzer wins, management led by Soon-Shiong announced 74 newsroom layoffs, roughly 13% of the newsroom staff. This was the first mass layoff round since Soon-Shiong bought the paper in 2018; declining ad revenue was cited as the main culprit. Then in July, news broke that Soon-Shiong was selling the San Diego Union-Tribune paper that he bought together with the Los Angeles Times five years earlier. To the dismay of many in the media industry Soon-Shiong sold the paper for an undisclosed sum to Alden Global Capital, which has developed a reputation for gutting staff at its publications.
