Patrick Soon Shiong

Billionaire drug developer Patrick Soon-Shiong of West Los Angeles should be moving up the list of the nation's richest people with a deal Sunday to sell a pharmaceutical company for $3.7 billion in cash. Soon-Shiong and other directors agreed Sunday night to sell APP Pharmaceuticals Inc. to German healthcare group Fresenius for $23 a share, a 29% premium over APP's closing price Thursday of $17.82 a share, APP said in a statement.

The field of Dodgers bidders was cut to three Friday, and a winner could be identified as soon as next week. The three finalists include a group led by hedge-fund billionaire Steven Cohen and Los Angeles billionaire and philanthropist Patrick Soon-Shiong; a group led by Magic Johnson and veteran baseball executive Stan Kasten; and St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke. The cut was confirmed by two people familiar with the sale process but not authorized to comment. Major League Baseball owners are expected to vote on the three remaining bidders early next week.

The gig: Billionaire chairman of drug developer Abraxis BioScience Inc. and philanthropist. Age: 57 Family: Wife Michele Chan and two children Home: West Los Angeles Hobbies: Boogie boarding and basketball How it all started: The son of a Chinese practitioner of traditional medicine, Soon-Shiong (pronounced soon-shong ) grew up in apartheid South Africa. He earned his medical degree in Johannesburg and joined UCLA as a surgeon and medical professor at age 31. His fortune is tied to his stake in Abraxis BioScience, a Los Angeles drug development company formed from two firms he founded to pursue promising therapies for cancer, diabetes and other devastating diseases.

No. 46 just bought out the Lakers' No. 32. Magic Johnson will forever be connected with the Lakers, but he can't be called part-owner of the team any longer. Johnson sold his 4.5% ownership stake in the franchise to billionaire season-ticket holder Patrick Soon-Shiong, the team said Monday. Johnson, 51, has become wealthy from his business ventures since retiring from basketball, including commercial real estate, health clubs and restaurants. But Johnson, who wore No. 32 on the way to becoming a Hall of Fame guard for the Lakers, is a relative pauper compared with Soon-Shiong, a surgeon and biotech investor ranked No. 46 among the nation's wealthiest people by Forbes magazine this year.

UCLA and the nation's largest Catholic healthcare system are teaming up on a potential acquisition of St. John's Health Center, a storied Santa Monica hospital up for sale after a recent management shake-up. The partnership between UCLA Health System and Ascension Health Alliance in St. Louis is one proposal under consideration by St. John's and its nonprofit Catholic owner, the Sisters of Charity Leavenworth Health System in Denver, according to people familiar with the matter. "No decisions have been made" about a possible sale of the hospital, St. John's interim Chief Executive Mike Wall told physicians this week in an internal memo.

In their quest to continue to change the team's culture, the Clippers have hired highly-thought-of Gerald Madkins to be the team's director of basketball operations, said NBA executives Friday who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Madkins, who has worked in the NBA for 10 years, will work in the front office alongside Gary Sacks, who was recently named the Clippers' general manager. Madkins spent the last two seasons with the New Orleans Hornets as their director of player personnel.

The Lakers, a city treasure that sports one of the NBA's highest payrolls and generations of loyal fans, are said to be worth an estimated $1 billion. But will they remain the property of the Buss family after team owner Jerry Buss' death Monday? AEG Chairman Philip Anschutz, who owns Staples Center, the Kings and 27% of the Lakers, has the right of first refusal if the Buss family wants to sell the franchise, according to spokesmen from both AEG and the Lakers. Buss purchased the team in 1979.

Biopharmaceutical maker Abraxis BioScience Inc. announced Monday that it would split into two companies, essentially undoing the year-old merger that created it. One of the spinoffs, which will retain the name Abraxis BioScience and the Los Angeles headquarters, will focus on drug research and development. The other firm, Abraxis Pharmaceutical Products, will concentrate on generic injectable medicines and be based in Schaumburg, Ill.

Members of the UC Board of Regents meeting at UCLA said they were cautiously optimistic that they would vote today to partner with Los Angeles County to reopen Martin Luther King Jr. hospital in Willowbrook. Under the proposal, the county and the University of California would create a nonprofit entity to run the hospital, with the university providing physician services and medical oversight. The agreement specifies that the hospital would have 120 beds, an emergency room, three operating rooms and no trauma center.

A former Wall Street trader plans to tell a congressional panel investigating computerized trading that the stock market is in a "crisis. " "U.S. equity markets are in dire straits," David Lauer, now a consultant with the advocacy group Better Markets Inc., said in his prepared testimony. "We are truly in a crisis. Over the past three decades a technological revolution has swept over Wall Street. " A Senate banking subcomittee holds a hearing Thursday on how regulations might rein in lightning-fast trading that precipitated the flash crash of 2010.