Stefano Pessina

Stefano Pessina of Italy is the new boss at Chicago-based retail pharmacy chain Walgreen Boots Alliance. He became the largest individual shareholder of Walgreens in 2012, when the company bought 45% of his British pharmacy chain, Alliance Boots Group. 

 

Walgreens announced it would buy the remaining 55% of Alliance Boots in August 2014, and analysts began questioning who held control of the merged company, its CEO Greg Wasson or Pessina. Pessina was named vice chairman of the combined company but was given responsibility for strategy and acquisitions, domains typically reserved for the CEO. The confusion cleared in December 2014, when Wasson announced he was stepping down as CEO and Pessina was replacing him as acting chief executive. A former nuclear engineer, Pessina got started in the pharmacy field when he turned his family's ailing Naples pharmaceutical wholesaler into Alliance UniChem Group, which merged with U.K. pharmacy chain Boots Group in 2006 to form Alliance Boots. The following year Alliance Boots went private in a $22 billion deal with financing from private equity firm KKR in what is still Europe's largest leveraged buyout.

 

Entrepreneurial and visionary leader

Stefano Pessina is the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance. He has been the driving force behind the merger of Walgreens and Alliance Boots, creating the first global pharmacy-led, health and wellbeing enterprise. The Company, with a presence in more than 25* countries, employs more than 370,000* people and is the largest retail pharmacy, health and daily living destination in the USA and Europe.
Born in Italy, Stefano graduated in nuclear engineering from Politechnico di Milano before starting his career in academia and later joining market research firm ACNielsen in Milan.
Stefano is well respected for his passion and dedication to the healthcare industry, in which he has played a key role in a career spanning four decades.

Driving innovation in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry

Stefano’s vision for a global pharmacy-led, health and wellbeing enterprise began in the 1970s, when he joined his family’s local pharmaceutical wholesale business. Throughout Stefano’s career, he has delivered successful organic growth, as well as innovative expansions through mergers and acquisitions.
As Executive Deputy Chairman of Alliance UniChem, Stefano led the company's merger with Boots Group PLC in 2006. In July the following year, the acquisition of Alliance Boots by AB Acquisitions (a company jointly backed by Stefano and the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) took the group private and ushered in a new era of growth. His strategic vision was that the deal would enable the Group to expand further and faster to enhance its position as an international leader in the healthcare services and beauty industries.

Transforming healthcare with unprecedented deals

Stefano took a crucial step towards achieving his vision of creating a leading global pharmaceutical group by completing the strategic partnership between Alliance Boots and Walgreen Co (Walgreens). Walgreens Boots Alliance was created on 31 December 2014. The new global enterprise combines Walgreens, the largest drugstore chain in the USA; Boots, the market leader in European retail pharmacy; and Alliance Healthcare, a leading international wholesaler and distributor.
In a further step towards the creation of an efficient global network, in 2013 Alliance Boots and Walgreens signed an innovative long-term partnership with AmerisourceBergen, one of North America’s largest pharmaceutical services companies. This relationship will enable the companies to benefit from greater scale and global opportunities and work together on programmes to improve service levels and efficiencies.

 

The first global pharmacy-led, health and wellbeing enterprise

The true scale of Stefano’s vision is demonstrated by the size of the new enterprise. Walgreens Boots Alliance (including equity method investments) is:
• the global leader in pharmacy-led, health and wellbeing retail with over 13,100* stores in 11* countries
• one of the largest global pharmaceutical wholesale and distribution networks with over 350* distribution centers delivering to more than 200,000† pharmacies, doctors, health centers and hospitals each year in 19* countries
• one of the world’s largest purchasers of prescription drugs and many other health and wellbeing products
As well as acting as Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Stefano also serves on the Board of Directors of Galenica AG, a publicly-traded Swiss healthcare group, and a number of private companies.