Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA)

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"What’s behind Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer’s abrupt departure?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/what-s-behind-walgreens-ceo-roz-brewer-s-abrupt-departure/ar-AA1ggQaL

" Abrupt exit. The supposedly sleepy Labor Day weekend began with a bang on Friday morning, when Walgreens abruptly announced that CEO Roz Brewer had stepped down and left its board, effective the day before (Aug 31).

The decision was “mutually agreed” upon by Brewer and Walgreens’s board, the company said. Brewer, who had been in the job for less than three years, used the same language in a LinkedIn post and an internal email to Walgreens employees seen by Fortune.

“This is perhaps one of the most difficult notes I have ever written over the course of my career,” Brewer wrote in both notes. Spokespeople for her and for Walgreens declined to comment further to Fortune on Friday."

"Brewer’s departure means that the most powerful Black woman running a Fortune 500 company—and one of only two Black female CEOs in the Fortune 500 at the start of last week—is out of a job, at least temporarily. (She will advise Walgreens on its search for a permanent CEO, the company said; Walgreens is paying her $9 million in severance, plus $2.25 million in consulting fees for the next six months, according to a securities filing Friday.)

"Her departure also raises questions about Walgreens’s ability to pull off the ambitious pivot towards health care that Brewer had announced six months after becoming Walgreens CEO. Like larger rival CVS, Walgreens under Brewer has been buying up primary-care clinics and trying to turn itself into a full-service health care provider. But a transformation of that magnitude takes time, and it appears to be going more slowly than both Walgreens and its investors would like: In June, the company cut its full-year earnings guidance, while executives acknowledged that they were “disappointed with the pace of our path to profitability” in its health care business.

It's also unclear how much support Brewer’s health care strategy had from Walgreens executive chairman (and former CEO and largest shareholder) Stefano Pessina. The Wall Street Journal in January reported that Pessina envisioned a slower expansion into health care, one that was “best achieved through partnerships and minority stakes," and that he said that "buying up companies outside of the core pharmacy industry unnecessarily exposed Walgreens to risk.” Spokespeople for Walgreens and Brewer did not respond to requests for comment over the weekend."