Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA)

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"Walgreens Billionaire Spies Even Greater Riches"

"(Bloomberg Opinion) -- A $70 billion buyout of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. would be straight out of the Stefano Pessina playbook. While the circumstances behind the informal talks between the company and private equity firms, including KKR & Co, are unknown, as the chief executive and largest shareholder of the drugstore chain, Pessina was probably at the forefront. Any deal would be impossible without the backing of the Italian billionaire who owns 16% of the group.

Pessina has spent more than four decades building his pharmaceutical distribution and retail empire through swashbuckling deals. He has been patient, adding to the group piece by piece. But he’s also been opportunistic. With shares in Walgreens down by about 24% over the past year, he may have spotted his chance to extract the group from the public markets.

Indeed, he’s been here before. In 2006, Pessina merged his company Alliance UniChem with Boots. A year later he took the combined group private — with KKR — in a $16 billion deal, Europe’s biggest buyout at the time.

Acquiring Walgreens would dwarf Alliance Boots. It would probably need several financial sponsors and substantial debt funding. Walgreen’s leverage is already fairly high. Net debt will be about 1.8 times Ebitda at the end of the current financial year, according to Bloomberg analyst estimates..."

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/walgreens-billionaire-spies-even-greater-104010292.html