The LA Times' billionaire owner says he plans to take the paper public and 'allow it to be democratized'
Soon-Shiong, a businessman, investor, and medical researcher, broke the news in a Monday episode of Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show."
"I'm going to announce something with you tonight," he said to Stewart. "Is that we're going to take LA Times public and allow it to be democratized, and allow the public to have the ownership of the paper."
The announcement was followed by cheering and applause from the audience.
Soon-Shiong, through his investment firm Nant Capital, took over ownership of the paper in 2018 and became its executive chairman. It was previously owned by media company Tronc.
He said to Stewart that the IPO would go through over the next year. If it goes through, the LA Times will join other publicly traded news giants like The New York Times Co. and Tribune Publishing Co.
Soon-Shiong is also the executive chairman of ImmunityBio, a biotechnology company that develops vaccines and therapies for cancer and other diseases.
He said he grew up in South Africa during apartheid, without access to television, so he highly valued newspapers and radio.
"As I grew up in South Africa, the only thing that inspired me and kept me alive was the newspaper," he said on "The Daily Show."
He added, "So the opportunity for me, working on cancer and healing, hopefully curing cancer, is to have a place where the people, the voice of the people, truly the voice of the people, could be heard."
Representatives for the LA Times and its union, the LA Times Guild, did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
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