Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Stefano Pessina won the takeover battle for Alliance Boots Plc, the UK’s largest drugstore chain, beating financier Guy Hands with a sweetened bid of 11.1 billion ($22.2 billion), Bloomberg has reported.
The takeover, Europe’s biggest ever leveraged buyout, gives KKR control of 3,100 stores and a wholesale drug supplier to more than 125,000 pharmacies and hospitals. KKR has been involved in $109 billion of buyouts this year.
“They’ve been forced by Terra Firma into paying more,” said Robert Clark, a senior partner at Retail Knowledge Bank in London. “You wonder what the ultimate value is, and you have to assume that it’s more than this. Pessina clearly has a long-term vision for the company.”
The private equity firm KKR also has proposed acquiring First Data Corporation. Research firm TowerGroup had this to say about the announcement: “While KKR’s announcement of its intended buyout of First Data raises more questions than it answers, it clearly indicates the demise of First Data’s monolithic posture as the one company in the world that was able to process any consumer payment anywhere. That stance, even though modified by the spin-off of Western Union, no longer suits the reality of the payments industry.”