As Walgreens Looks to Save Cash, Suitor Sycamore Seeks Funding

  • Private equity firm Sycamore speaking to private credit firms
  • Drugstore chain halts quarterly dividend, rattling investors
Customers shop at a Walgreens store in El Cerrito, California.Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.’s chairman and biggest shareholder, Stefano Pessina, has dealmaking in his DNA. Yet finding a deal to rescue the drugstore empire he built is proving difficult.

When the Italian-born Pessina, 83, merged his Alliance Boots with the US pharmacy giant in 2014, it marked a crowning moment in a decades-long campaign to construct a pharmacy colossus.