Boots may soon get the boot off British high streets as the pharmacy chain’s American owner begins takeover talks.
Walgreens Boots Alliance, which bought Boots in 2014, is reportedly in takeover talks with US private equity giant Sycamore Partners.
Sycamore, however, is understood to be seeking separate ownership of Boots, meaning the 175-year-old brand would go up for auction.
Troubled Wallgreens announced last year that it would close 650 branches to make £618million in savings.
Boots employs around 52,000 people which includes 4,300 pharmacists. With some 2,100 stores, nearly nine in 10 Britons are always within 10 minutes of a Boots, according to the company.
The proposed deal could value Boots at a little under £8,000,000,000, according to The Wall Street Journal.
WBA is public – so is owned by shareholders – and has seen its shares slump by millions for nearly a decade.
If Sycamore signs a deal, this would take Wallgreens private, so wouldn’t be listed on stock exchanges. Shares of the pharmaceutical powerhouse surged by 20% after the deal was first reported Tuesday.
Sycamore, which owns US stationery chain Staples, isn’t expected to buy up Wallgreens in its entirety.
Instead, Walgreens’ billionaire chairman and largest shareholder, Stefano Pessina, owns a 17% stake in Boots so will play a big role in the chemists’ future, sources told Sky News.
Whoever ends up buying Boots will likely run it as a separate British firm, rather than part of the American family.
WBA has spent years umming and ahing about the future of Boots. The firm tried to flog the business for £7,000,000,000 in 2022 and considered doing so again earlier this year.
But these spin-off ideas and sales never quite landed due to strategy changes and firms undervaluing the retailer.
Between years of austerity, a worldwide pandemic and a cost of living crisis, it hasn’t been the best time recently to be a high-street retailer.
As one Metro columnist asked in 2013: ‘Is the death of the high street inevitable?’
Around 38 shops close every day in the UK, with nearly 7,000 shuttering in the first six months of this year alone.
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