Boots to be sold to Canada’s Weston family for $8.9bn
The sale, which needs regulatory approval, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, with Fairfax Financial as a partner.
Wittington Investments, the holding company of Canada’s Weston family, has agreed to buy Boots for $8.9 billion, including assumed debt, it said on 7 October 2026.
The sellers are Boots’ majority owner Sycamore Partners and the Pessina family. The release gives the price in US dollars only. The BBC converted it to £6.7bn. Wittington describes Boots as “the leading pharmacy and health and beauty retailer in the UK and Ireland”.
Wittington will take Boots’ retail operations in the UK and Ireland, Boots Opticians, No7 Beauty Company and its Thailand and franchised businesses. Sycamore Partners, in partnership with the Pessina family, will keep The Boots Group’s other interests in Farmacias Benavides and Alliance Healthcare Deutschland.
Fairfax Financial Holdings, a Toronto-based holding company, is partnering with Wittington, which will have operational control when the deal closes. Galen Weston, Chairman of Wittington, will then become Chairman of Boots.
Wittington says it plans to keep investing in Boots, including upgrading stores, optimizing the online experience and expanding the healthcare services available to customers. Weston said: “We see a meaningful opportunity to make a great business even better through stable long-term ownership, further capital investment, and the renewed operating focus required to serve customers with excellence for generations to come.”
Alex Baldock, Chief Executive Officer of Boots, said: “Boots matters. Every day, our colleagues give millions of people longer, healthier and happier lives.”
Stefan Kaluzny, Managing Director of Sycamore Partners, said the firm had “re-established Boots as a standalone company” a year earlier, “allowing its management team and more than 50,000 colleagues to focus solely on their business and customers”.
Stefano Pessina said: “It has been one of the privileges of my and Ornella’s life to have been so closely associated with Boots over the last 20 years.”
The release says Wittington owned Selfridges from 2003 to 2021. It also controls George Weston Limited and, through it, Loblaw Companies, which has more than 2,800 locations and owns Shoppers Drug Mart, which the release calls Canada’s largest pharmacy, health and beauty business.
The deal is subject to certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027.
The release does not say what the sale means for jobs or for the number of Boots branches, and it does not say how much of the price Fairfax will fund.