Roll up, roll up, who wants to buy Boots, a grand old name of UK retailing with 170 years of history under its belt? Not many people, it seems. Or rather, not many at a price the seller, the US group Walgreens, had hoped to achieve.
The reported joint bid of slightly more than £5bn from Reliance Industries of India and the US private equity fund Apollo is a long way short of where the rumour-mill had suggested the winning line would lie. Advisers had been trying to talk the price into £7bn-plus territory. There’s still time for the action to heat up (the ubiquitous Issa brothers of Asda and EG petrol forecourt fame are not formally out yet) but there’s an unmistakable lack of buzz around this transaction.
