Boots (company)
Boots UK Limited is a British health and beauty retailer and pharmacy chain that operates in the United Kingdom.
The former parent company, The Boots Company plc, merged with Alliance UniChem in 2006 to form Alliance Boots. In 2007, Alliance Boots was bought by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Stefano Pessina, taking the company private, and moving its headquarters to Switzerland, making it the first-ever FTSE 100 company to be bought by a private equity firm. In 2012, Walgreens acquired a 45% stake in Alliance Boots, with the option to purchase the remaining shares within three years. It exercised this option in 2014, resulting in Boots becoming a subsidiary of the newly formed Walgreens Boots Alliance on 31 December 2014. In August 2025, Sycamore Partners completed a $10 billion acquisition of Walgreens Boots Alliance and spun off Boots into a standalone private company, The Boots Group, which includes various international assets formerly held by Walgreens Boots Alliance.
The current parent company, The Boots Group has 3,912 shops around the world, 66,400 employees and annual sales of $23.6 billion. It owns shops in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Mexico and Thailand, holds retail investments in China, and operates a franchise model in the Middle East and Indonesia.
Boots is one of the largest retailers in the UK and Ireland, both in terms of revenue and the number of shops. As of December 2024, Boots has 2,000 stores across the United Kingdom and Ireland ranging from local pharmacies to large health and beauty shops. Its shops are primarily located on the high streets and in shopping centres. It sells many health and beauty products, and also provides optician and hearing care services within shops and as standalone practices. Boots also operates a retail website and a loyalty card programme called the Boots Advantage Card.
History
Early history
Boots was established in 1849, by John Boot. After his father's death in 1860, Jesse Boot, aged 10, helped his mother run the family's herbal medicine shop in Nottingham, which was incorporated as Boot and Co. Ltd in 1883, becoming Boots Pure Drug Company Ltd in 1888. In 1920, Jesse Boot sold the company to the American United Drug Company. However, because of deteriorating economic circumstances in North America, Boots was sold back into British hands in 1933. The grandson of the founder, John Boot, who inherited the title Baron Trent from his father, headed the company. The Boots Pure Drug Company name was changed to The Boots Company Limited in 1971.Between 1898 and 1966, many branches of Boots incorporated a lending library department, known as Boots Book-Lovers' Library.
Boots diversified into the research and manufacturing of drugs with its development of the Ibuprofen painkiller during the 1960s, invented by John Nicholson and Stewart Adams. The company was awarded the Queen's Award For Technical Achievement for this in 1987. A major research focus of Boots in the 1980s, was the drug for congestive heart failure, Manoplax. The withdrawal from market of Manoplax due to safety concerns in 1993, caused major pressure from investors, and in 1994, Boots divested its prescription drugs division, which had become no longer viable, to BASF. In 2006, it sold the Nurofen brand to Reckitt Benckiser.
In 1968, Boots acquired the 622-strong Timothy Whites and Taylors Ltd chain. Boots expanded into Canada by purchasing the Tamblyn Drugs chain in 1979.
Expansion in the 1980s and beyond
In 1982, the company opened a new manufacturing plant in Cramlington, Northumberland. In the early 1990s, Boots began to diversify and bought Halfords, the bicycle and car parts business in 1991. The company offered numerous private label products, e.g., offering the PT400 typewriter, a rebadged Silverette model by Silver Seiko Ltd. of Japan. It also developed the Children's World business of larger out of town superstores in the 1980s, but sold this chain to Mothercare in 1996. Halfords was sold in 2002.Boots Opticians Ltd was formed in 1987, with the acquisition of Clement Clarke Ltd and Curry and Paxton Ltd. Boots Opticians became the UK's second-largest retail optics chain. In 2009, Boots Opticians acquired Dollond & Aitchison.
Boots diversified into dentistry in 1998, with a number of shops offering this service. Boots sold the Do It All DIY chain to Focus DIY in 1998. Boots also made a venture into "Wellbeing" services offering customers treatments ranging from facials, homoeopathy, and nutritional advice to laser eye surgery and Botox but these services were abandoned in 2003, despite a launch that included a dedicated Freeview and Sky TV channel of the same name, and even redirecting web traffic from boots.com to wellbeing.com.
File:Boots, Belfast, May 2013.JPG|thumb|Boots branch in Belfast, Northern Ireland
In late 2004, Boots sold its laser eye surgery business to Optical Express.
Alliance Boots
In October 2005, a merger with Alliance UniChem was announced by the then chairman, Sir Nigel Rudd. The CEO Richard Baker left, and the new group became Alliance Boots plc. The merger became effective on 31 July 2006.File:Boots store, Mullingar.png|thumb|Boots branch in Mullingar, Ireland
Alliance Boots was purchased by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Stefano Pessina, the deputy chairman of the company, in April 2007 for £11.1 billion, taking the company private and beating a rival bid from Guy Hands's Terra Firma Capital Partners. This was the first ever instance of a FTSE 100 company having been bought by a private equity firm. In June 2008, the group headquarters were moved to Zug, Switzerland. According to John Ralfe, Boots' former head of corporate finance, "the UK has lost about £100m a year in tax as result".
'Boots the Chemists Limited' was re-registered under the name 'Boots UK Limited' on 1 October 2007. Management of all staff was moved to Boots Management Services Limited on 1 July 2010.
No. 7 Protect & Perfect Intense Beauty Serum
In 2007, Professor Chris Griffiths' University of Manchester team found the Serum, formerly, No. 7 Refine & Rewind Beauty Serum stimulated the production of fibrillin-1 and appeared to smooth out wrinkles,. In 2007, an independent investigation by the BBC's Horizon programme caused a run on a product in the same product range after it was found to be the only one to have a beneficial effect. Richard Weller, an Edinburgh University dermatologist, said it was unlikely to be as effective as prescription retinoids.Sale of homeopathic products
In 2009, Boots Superintendent Pharmacist Paul Bennett was interviewed by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee about the company's sale of homeopathic medicines. He told the committee that the company had no evidence to suggest that homeopathic medicines are efficacious but Boots sold them anyway, for reasons of "consumer choice". The comments attracted media attention. In 2010, protesters staged a mass homeopathy "overdose" outside Boots shops.File:Vauxhall Combo Cargo van in Boots Healthcare Logistics livery parked at Pentagon Shopping Centre, Chatham, Kent, England - 4 October 2025.jpg|thumb|A Boots Healthcare Logistics delivery van parked at the Pentagon Shopping Centre in Chatham, Kent, England
Walgreens
In June 2012, it was announced that Walgreens, the United States' largest chemist chain, would purchase a 45% stake in Alliance Boots for US$6.7 billion. The deal was said to be a long-term plan to give maximum exposure to both brands, Boots more so in the US and, Walgreens more so in the UK and in China through Boots' presence in that market. The deal gave the option to complete a full merger of the organisations within three years costing an extra $9.5bn. Walgreens confirmed on 6 August 2014, that it would purchase the remaining 55% and merge with Alliance Boots to form a new holding company, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.In August 2012, Boots began stocking convenience food products from Irish retailer Musgrave's SuperValu chain.
Charging the NHS for carrying out unnecessary medicine reviews
In April 2016, the Pharmacists' Defence Association stated that company managers were exploiting the NHS by insisting that each outlet carry out medicine use reviews, even if patients did not need them. The NHS paid £28 per review up to a maximum of 400 per shop per year.2016 reports of workplace pressure
At the same time as the article about medicine reviews, The Guardian published a longer report on the same day called 'How Boots went Rogue', which told the story from the eyes of a Boots pharmacist talking about working conditions at the company. It also covered the buyout of the company and the owners' financial approach. Four days later it published an article with emails from some pharmacists who had written about how "the chain allegedly compels staff to compromise ethics for targets". The article said "The letters editor believes this may be the largest haul of mail he has ever received about a single article. Others rang in."There were two further follow-up articles in the days following. The Guardian subsequently noted a letter purporting to be from an "independent pharmacist" criticising its stance on the issue which it identified as having been edited and amended by one of the firm's vice-presidents. The letter was emailed as a Word document and contained tracked changes.
Following the Guardian reports, Boots announced the departure of UK operations director, Simon Roberts, in June 2016.
Supply of the "morning after pill"
In July 2017, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service revealed that Boots was selling emergency contraceptive medication at four times the cost price and had refused requests to join rival pharmacy retail chains, including Superdrug and Tesco, which had agreed to cease profiting financially in this way. In a written response to BPAS, Boots revealed that they were frequently contacted by individuals who disapproved of the dispensing of such medication, which might be viewed as "incentivising inappropriate use", an assertion which campaigners described as "insulting and sexist".BPAS called on the public to boycott the company and email them requesting that they reverse the policy. Following the boycott's launch, lawyers representing Boots alleged that the online complaint form created by BPAS had resulted in a "torrent of abuse" to five of Boots' senior managers and that BPAS had facilitated and tacitly encouraged harassment by naming individual staff members on the form. In response, BPAS stated that Boots had "failed to provide any evidence of abuse sent through the campaign". In November 2017, more than 130 Labour politicians signed a letter criticising Boots' failure to fulfil its promise to stock a low-cost alternative in its shops by October. At the end of January 2018, Boots confirmed that it was now offering the cheaper medication in all of its pharmacies.
Throughout the media coverage, a May–July 2017, pricelist from its wholesaler and sister company Alliance Healthcare stated that the "Normal Retail Price inc. VAT" of Levonelle One Step was £12.72.