Australian pharmacy business Sigma Healthcare has pulled out of takeover talks to buy Boots.<\/p>\n
The UK beauty and pharmacy giant revealed last week that it had held early discussions over a potential takeover deal.<\/p>\n
However, bosses at Sigma said today that the company has “elected to withdraw its interest and cease discussions immediately”.<\/p>\n
The Australian company said it engaged in the sale process for Boots as it provided a “potentially unique opportunity” to accelerate its operations across the UK.<\/p>\n
However, it said it “concluded that such an acquisition would not currently meet its strategic and capital investment objectives”.<\/p>\n
Sigma said it remains committed to growth in the UK, after acquiring a stake in London-based pharmacy business Greenlight Healthcare earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Last week, it was also reported that Boots held talks with the Canadian branch of the billionaire Weston family, which owns the majority of grocery chain Loblaws.<\/p>\n
The Weston family’s British side is the majority owner of Primark\/Penneys through its parent firm Associated British Foods, which also owns grocery brands including Twinings and Ryvita.<\/p>\n
Reports suggested that Boots could be valued at around $10 billion as part of a sale.<\/p>\n
The potential sale comes only a year after Boots was snapped up by private equity firm Sycamore Partners after the US investment giant acquired parent firm Walgreens Boots Alliance for $23.7 billion.<\/p>\n
In August last year, Sycamore split Boots from the US operations.<\/p>\n
The new UK-based Boots business included Boots UK and Ireland, Boots opticians, No7 Beauty company and pharmacies in Thailand, Mexico and Germany.<\/p>\n
It is understood that Sycamore is still considering a potential initial public offering (IPO) for Boots on the London stock market.<\/p>\n
However, a private sale would deal a fresh blow to the London Stock Exchange amid a dearth of new major listings in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian pharmacy business Sigma Healthcare has pulled out of takeover talks to buy Boots. The UK beauty and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-501888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}