Walgreens Boots Alliance will be taken private by Sycamore Partners for $10 billion, the firms said on Thursday, closing out nearly 100 years of trading on public markets for the U.S. pharmacy giant.
The price is a fraction of the $100 billion the second-largest U.S. pharmacy chain was worth a decade ago. Its fortunes collapsed as drug margins fell and as consumers turned to cheaper rivals such as Amazon to fill their prescriptions and purchase toiletries.
And when rivals diversified into insurance or prescription management, Walgreens invested billions of dollars in buying other pharmacy chains, such as European giant Alliance Boots, despite the trend away from in-store shopping.
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