Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) called off plans to sell its UK pharmacy & chemist chain Boots UK. The company said that no third party was able to make an adequate offer due to the turmoil and volatility in global financial markets. Thus, a potential deal with the Reliance-Apollo Global Management consortium has been scrapped. As per sources, Apollo and TDR Capital who also separately had bidden, faced headwinds for financing the deal as banks were worried about underwriting a large part of the financing in the current market conditions. It was reported that Reliance was in talks with banks to raise $8bn to buy out Boots. Bloomberg notes that deal financing has become expensive as central banks have resorted to sharp rate hikes to address high inflation.
Walgreen’s dollar bonds guaranteed by WBA were trading higher with its 4.4% 2042s up over 0.46 points to 81.26, yielding 6.01%. Reliance’s 6.25% 2040s were up 0.5 points to 110.73, yielding 5.32%
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