Phillip Frost Net Worth

Phillip Frost, M.D., is an American physician, entrepreneur, and one of the most distinctive figures in modern pharmaceutical investing. Born in Philadelphia in 1936, he trained as a dermatologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and built his career in Miami, where he has been a fixture of the city's medical, scientific, and philanthropic life for more than half a century. He is married to Patricia Frost, his partner of decades, with whom he has shared an extraordinary record of giving.

Frost's business career rests on three pillars. In 1972 he co-founded Key Pharmaceuticals, where he commercialized the Nicoderm transdermal nicotine patch and built the company into an attractive specialty pharma player. Schering-Plough acquired Key in 1986 for approximately $835 million, establishing Frost as a serious operator. He then built IVAX Corporation into one of the world's largest generic-drug companies, ultimately selling it to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries in 2006 for approximately $7.4 billion. Since 2007 he has served as Chairman and CEO of OPKO Health (NASDAQ: OPK), a diagnostics and pharmaceutical company where he is by far the largest insider holder and is famous on Wall Street for his unusually consistent Form 4 insider buying — sometimes filing purchases on a near-weekly cadence for years at a time.

Frost's career has not been without controversy. In 2018 the SEC charged him in connection with an alleged pump-and-dump scheme involving small-cap stocks (BIOZ, MGT, MBOT). He settled in 2019 without admitting wrongdoing, paid a roughly $5.5 million penalty, and accepted a penny-stock officer/director bar. He has continued to lead OPKO and to file insider buys in the years since. Beyond business, Frost is one of South Florida's most active philanthropists — the Frost Museum of Science (Miami), the Frost School of Music (University of Miami), and the Frost Art Museum (FIU) all bear his and Patricia's name, alongside major gifts to Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is also a serious art collector. The throughline across all of it is persistence: he keeps showing up, keeps buying, keeps building.