Canada’s Weston family buys Boots for $8.9bn

Former Selfridges owners buy UK high street institution from long-term backer Stefano Pessina

The Canadian family that once owned Selfridges department store has bought the UK pharmacy and beauty retailer Boots for $8.9bn (£6.74bn).

The acquisition of the Nottingham-headquartered chain, which has 1,800 stores across the UK and employs 50,000 people, is also being backed by the investment firm Fairfax, which owns The Sporting Life Group and Sleep Country, Canada’s largest mattress retailer, which owns Simba Sleep in the UK.

“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.”

In 2022, the US pharmacy group Walgreens put Boots up for sale with a suggested price tag of up to £10bn, but it later dropped the plans as potential buyers, including Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, the US private equity investor Apollo Global Management and Asda’s owners TDR Capital, struggled to raise funds. A plan to float the business at a valuation of about £7bn was dropped in 2024.

“It has been one of the privileges of my and [my wife] Ornella’s life to have been so closely associated with Boots over the last 20 years. We are delighted to be passing on a thriving Boots to strong and reliable owners who understand the value of its great heritage.”

The acquisition of Boots marks the return of the Weston family’s Canadian branch to the UK high street, after the family sold off the Selfridges department store chain for £4bn in 2022.

Richard Hyman, the veteran retail analyst, said the Weston family were “the most encouraging ownership of Boots for many, many years”.

Hyman said Boots had an opportunity to make more of its vast loyalty scheme and to offer more services through its network of stores across the UK, many of which had seen little modernisation in recent decades.

Hyman said: “Boots needs and deserves owners that will show it a bit of love, and history shows the Westons take a longer view.”