Alliance Boots, one of the largest pharmacy-led companies in the world, is likely to shift ownership once again by early 2015 after the announcement on 6 August 2014 about the possibility of a full takeover by US pharmacy retailer, Walgreens. A company with great influence, especially in the UK, Alliance Boots has already changed ownership once in the past ten years, a process which can cause unsettling times for investors, staff and consumers alike. To know where any upcoming takeover could lead the company, it is interesting to look to the past to understand how previous incarnations have panned out.
Constant growth
Alliance Boots was created out of a merger between Alliance Unichem and Boots Group. The merger between these two iconic pharmacy companies was announced in 2005. Contested by a rival firm, the merger was approved in 2006 after the closing of 96 stores to meet the requirements of the Office of Fair Trade. Former shareholders of Alliance Unichem took 49.8% of the new company, with the remaining 50.2% going to the former shareholders of Boots Group. This merger offered Boots the opportunity to expand out of the UK; although there had been Boots pharmacies in other countries starting in the 1930s they were largely closed during the 1980s. Alliance pharmacies were more internationally dispersed and immediately began to carry Boots products.
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