Pessina is the chief executive officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, a publicly traded drugstore operator. The Deerfield, Illinois-based company has more than 9,000 stores in the U.S. and had revenue of $132 billion in the year to Aug. 31, 2018. Walgreens completed its merger with the Pessina-led Alliance Boots on Dec. 31, 2014.
Stefano Pessina's net worth of $10.3B can buy ...
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The majority of Pessina's fortune is derived from a 15.8% stake in Walgreens Boots Alliance, a publicly traded drugstore operator that has about 9,500 stores in the U.S., according to its website. He owns the shares in his name and controls nearly all of them through Luxembourg-based holding companies Newcip and Alliance Sante Participations (ASP), according to a January 2019 stock exchange filing.
He obtained a stake in Walgreens in 2012, after the U.S. company bought 45% of closely held Alliance Boots for $6.7 billion. Walgreens exercised its option to buy the remaining 55% of Alliance Boots for 3.1 billion pounds ($5.3 billion) in cash and 144.3 million Walgreens shares on Aug. 6, 2014. The deal was completed on Dec. 31, 2014. Pessina is assigned 35% of the proceeds from this second transaction based on the economic interest ASP held in Alliance Boots at the time.
The value of the billionaire's cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, asset sales and taxes.
Laura Vergani, a spokesperson for Alliance Boots, declined to comment on Pessina's net worth.
Stefano Pessina was born in 1941 in Pescara on the east coast of Italy, when his father, Oreste, was serving at an air force base there. He studied nuclear engineering at the University of Milan, and worked at the university as an academic before joining market researcher AC Nielsen. He left in 1974 to help run the family's ailing pharmaceutical distribution company.
He began buying smaller pharmaceutical distribution companies in Italy, and after creating Luxembourg-based holding company Alliance Sante expanded across Europe. In 1986, Pessina bought Di Pharma, a pharmaceutical company headed by Ornella Barra, the current CEO of Alliance Boots, creating a business and personal partnership between the two that continues today.
Pessina merged Alliance Sante with London-based pharmaceutical cooperative Unichem to create Alliance Unichem in 1997. Eight years later, the company announced the 7 billion pound ($12.3 billion) merger of Alliance Unichem with Boots, the U.K.'s biggest pharmacy chain. The deal was finalized on July 31, 2006, creating publicly traded Alliance Boots, Europe's biggest drug distributor. Pessina joined with private equity firm KKR the following year to acquire all of Alliance Boots for $22 billion in a leveraged buyout.
Walgreen, the biggest U.S. drugstore operator, paid $6.7 billion in cash and stock for a 45 percent stake in Alliance Boots in 2012. In the deal, Pessina obtained a 7.7 percent stake in Walgreen and retained 18 percent of Alliance Boots. The American drugstore chain exercised its option to buy the rest of the company for $5.2 billion in cash and 144.3 million Walgreen shares in August 2014. The transaction completed on Dec. 31, 2014.
He lives in Monaco with partner Barra.