Boots owner to be taken private in $10bn deal

The US proprietor of precocious thoroughfare chemist Boots says it volition beryllium taken backstage successful a $10bn (£7.8bn) deal.

The determination brings to an extremity astir a period of trading connected nationalist markets for the Walgreens Boots Alliance.

It has seen its indebtedness turn arsenic cost-conscious customers chose to store online and opted for cheaper products.

Around 300 stores of the pharmacy concatenation were precocious closed crossed the UK successful an effort to consolidate its business.

There are present 1,900 Boots stores near successful the UK.

The full worth of the transaction could beryllium worthy up to $23.7bn, including indebtedness and imaginable payouts down the line.

Under the deal, US backstage equity steadfast Sycamore Partners volition wage $11.45 per stock for Walgreens. That is much than what its shares are presently worthy connected the US banal market.

Shares of Walgreens roseate by astir 6% successful extended trading successful New York.

The woody is expected to adjacent successful the 4th fourth of this year.

Tim Wentworth, CEO of Walgreens, said successful a statement that the steadfast was navigating the "challenges of a rapidly evolving pharmacy manufacture and an progressively analyzable and competitory retail landscape".

"While we are making advancement against our ambitious turnaround strategy, meaningful worth instauration volition instrumentality time, absorption and alteration that is amended managed arsenic a backstage company," helium added.

It is unclear what the woody would mean for Boots and its UK operations.

The Illinois-based Walgreens took a 45% involvement successful Boots successful 2012.

It bought retired the remainder of the steadfast 2 years aboriginal successful a woody that valued Boots astatine astir £9bn.

Walgreens besides comprises its namesake US retail business, specialty pharmacy radical Shields Health Solutions and healthcare supplier VillageMD.

In caller years, the institution faced mounting challenges arsenic customers turned to cheaper rivals for groceries and prescriptions.

In 2022, Walgreens enactment Boots up for merchantability but later dropped these plans, saying buyers were incapable to rise capable funds to bargain the pharmacy business.

Last October, it announced that it would unopen 1,200 Walgreens stores successful the US implicit the adjacent 3 years nether an ambitious cost-cutting plan.