Walgreens Boots Alliance is lining up Goldman Sachs to work on a potential disposal of the UK’s biggest and best-known chain of high street chemists, Sky News learns.
The parent company of Boots, Britain’s biggest high street chemist, is to explore a sale of the business next year that could value it at well over £5bn.
If it valued Boots at £10bn or more, a sale of Boots would be the biggest proposed UK retail deal since a £15bn merger of Asda and J Sainsbury was aborted in 2019 for competition reasons.
Asda was subsequently sold for £6.8bn to a consortium comprising Asda and Mohsin and Zuber Issa, the businessmen behind the EG Group petrol retailing empire.
The Italian octogenarian engineered the merger of Boots and Alliance Unichem, a drug wholesaler, in 2006, with the buyout firm KKR acquiring the combined group in an £11bn deal the following year.
Read more/Source: Sky News
