Billionaire biotech investor Patrick Quickly-Shiong is exploring a sale of the Los Angeles Occasions lower than three years after buying it for $500 million, folks acquainted with the matter mentioned.
The transfer marks an abrupt about-face for Mr. Quickly-Shiong, who had vowed to restore stability to the West Coast information establishment and has invested a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} into the paper in an effort to show it round.
After The Wall Road Journal revealed this text, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Occasions mentioned Mr. Quickly-Shiong and his household “proceed to spend money on and plan for the way forward for the Los Angeles Occasions, and don’t plan to promote.” A tweet on Mr. Quickly-Shiong’s account mentioned: “WSJ article inaccurate. We’re dedicated to the @LATimes.”
When Mr. Quickly-Shiong acquired the Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune and a handful of weeklies from Tribune Publishing Co. , then referred to as Tronc Inc., in 2018, it was met with nice fanfare from workers and media watchers after years of turmoil and downsizing on the publications. On the time, he mentioned that the sale represented the start of a brand new period and that he supposed to do what it took to make the enterprise viable for the subsequent 100 years.
He has since grown dissatisfied with the information group’s sluggish enlargement of its digital viewers and its substantial losses, the folks mentioned. He additionally has more and more come to imagine that the Los Angeles Occasions and San Diego Union-Tribune—collectively generally known as the California Occasions firm—can be higher served in the event that they have been half of a bigger media group, they mentioned.
