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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Al Mann Leaves Legacy of Biotech Innovation

With the death last month of billionaire entrepreneur Alfred Mann, the regional San Fernando Valley business community lost one of its most prolific and innovative members. Keith Markey, a research analyst with Griffin Securities in New York and an investor in Mann’s namesake venture MannKind Corp. in Valencia, said that Mann’s lasting legacy is that the world needs more people like him. “There are not too many people who accomplish as many things as he did,” Markey said. Mann founded and helped fund 17 companies during his career. More than half were acquired for a combined total of nearly $8 billion. His ventures include aerospace company Spectrolab Inc. in Sylmar, now a subsidiary of Boeing Co.; publicly traded retinal prosthetics developer Second Sight Medical Products Inc. in Sylmar; and insulin pump manufacturer MiniMed Inc., which was later acquired by Medtronic Inc. Among other companies he founded are electric implant maker Advanced Bionics Corp. in Valencia, which was acquired by Boston Scientific in 2007 for $740 million; battery maker Quallion, which was sold in 2013 for $30 million to EnerSys, an industrial battery maker in Reading, Pa.; and Stellar Microelectronics, sold in 2012 to Singapore manufacturer Flextronics. In 1985, a $1 million donation from Mann launched the Alfred Mann Foundation with the mission to develop medical devices. Now with assets of more than $120 million, the foundation has helped create the cochlear implant, radio frequency microstimulators and implantable drug delivery systems. In 2014, Mann sold both of his Valley commercial real estate assets. The 120-acre Mann Biomedical Park in Valencia and the nearly 10-acre Sylmar Biomedical Park were picked up by a joint venture of Intertex Cos. in Valencia and L.A. investment firm Oaktree Capital Management for a price industry sources put at about $100 million. Brent Reinke, an attorney and founder of BioScience Alliance, a Westlake Village organization promoting the life sciences, said that while many of the companies he owned were located in the northeast San Fernando Valley or in the Santa Clarita Valley, the notoriety he brought to the entire region was a huge help in getting people to think differently when it came to the life sciences. “He led the charge in that regard,” Reinke said. Reinke said that he met Mann once at an event four or five years ago and called him a very bright businessman who wanted to create products that were life-changing for so many people. “He knew he was someone who had the ability to influence people and he did a remarkable job in doing that,” he said. Mann, 90, died Feb. 25 at his home in Las Vegas. He left behind his wife, Claude, and seven children. Markey said that he did not anticipate the death would have much effect on MannKind, the developer of inhalable insulin Afrezza. While there has been speculation about a sale of the company, that is not close to the truth, Markey said. The future of the company would follow the pattern established by other Mann businesses in which the technology first needs to be validated before new ownership comes in. “I would think it would be three or four years before you see anything like an acquisition take place,” Markey said of MannKind.

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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