Boots is edging closer to a change of ownership that would reshape one of Britain’s best known high street names. The private equity firm Sycamore Partners, which controls the chemist through its stake in Walgreens, is reportedly closing in on a deal to sell Boots to the Canadian branch of the billionaire Weston family for about $9bn, according to the Guardian and the Financial Times.
The figure values the loss-making pharmacy chain at roughly £7bn. If the deal completes, it would end years of uncertainty over the future of the 80 year old business and would also, as the FT notes, dampen long held hopes of a London stock market listing for Boots.
For the Weston family the move is a homecoming of sorts. The family made its name in UK retail through Associated British Foods and, more visibly, through the department store group Selfridges, which it sold for £4bn in 2022. A takeover of Boots would mark a return to the sector the family helped define.
The connection runs deeper than property. The FT points out that the family of Stefano Pessina, the Italian executive who engineered the 2012 merger that united Boots and Walgreens, holds a 44 per cent stake in each of the two businesses. That merger created the enlarged group from which Sycamore later took control.
Boots has been a mixed story under private equity. It remains a household fixture, with more than 2,200 stores and a health and beauty offer that anchors many town centres. Yet like other general merchants it has faced falling footfall, thinner margins and the cost of modernising ageing shops. A new owner would inherit those problems along with the brand.
Retail analysts see logic in the Weston interest. The family has shown a talent for turning underloved British retail assets around, and Boots still commands the trust of an older, higher spending customer base that online pure players struggle to reach. The pharmacy counter gives it a role in the NHS that a beauty retailer cannot match.
Any deal will draw scrutiny. The Weston family already owns Primark, the value clothing chain, and its Associated British Foods arm supplies a wide range of grocery brands. Regulators may want a closer look at the combined retail footprint in the UK. For now the talks are reported rather than confirmed, and the price could still move.
What is clear is that the high street’s biggest brands are once again in play. As the Guardian put it, a sale would give Britain’s most familiar pharmacy a new chapter, and give Canadian money a fresh toehold on British retail.