When Richard Baker told investors in March that he was determined “to put the chemist back in Boots”, no-one had an inkling that a £7bn merger was the way the softly spoken chief executive intended to do it. But the tie-up between Boots and Alliance UniChem will achieve just that – and a lot more. Overnight, the proposed ‘merger of equals’ will make Boots, a retail chain of 1,400 health and beauty stores in the UK, a serious operator in the pan-European pharmaceutical wholesale and retail market.
