Who Owns Boots?

Boots is owned by Sycamore Partners, the American private equity firm, which bought Walgreens Boots Alliance in a deal completing on 28 August 2025 and then split it into five standalone companies. Boots became one of them. The register caught the vehicle being built: the company now called The Boots Group Limited was incorporated seven weeks earlier under the codename Blazing Star Boots Superco. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Boots today?

The trading company is BOOTS UK LIMITED (00928555), incorporated 11 March 1968 and registered in Nottingham, where the business has been since John Boot opened his herbalist shop in 1849. Its person with significant control is Alliance Boots Holdings Limited (04452715).

Above that, ownership passed in 2025 from the listed Walgreens Boots Alliance to Sycamore Partners, in a transaction valued at up to a reported $23.7bn, with Stefano Pessina — the Italian businessman who built Alliance Boots — reinvesting his entire holding rather than cashing out.

Ultimate parent and corporate structure

Sycamore did not simply buy Walgreens Boots Alliance and keep it whole. On completion the group was broken into five separate businesses — Walgreens, The Boots Group, Shields Health Solutions, CareCentrix and VillageMD — each now standing alone under Sycamore’s ownership rather than inside a single company.

That matters for the question. Boots is no longer part of an American pharmacy chain’s corporate structure; it is a separate business with a private equity owner, which is a different thing from the arrangement that existed from 2014 to 2025.

As with the Asda and Morrisons pages on this site, a private equity owner means the economic interest sits with the funds Sycamore manages and their investors — pension schemes and institutions — rather than with the firm itself.

Major shareholders or controlling persons

There are no public shareholders. Walgreens Boots Alliance was delisted on completion, and holders received $11.45 a share in cash plus a right to further proceeds from the disposal of VillageMD interests.

Stefano Pessina is the individual most associated with Boots’ ownership, and he remains invested. He is not the controlling owner — Sycamore is — but his reinvestment of 100% of his interests distinguishes this from a straightforward exit.

Official records and evidence

Companies House holds two entries worth knowing about.

First, the acquisition vehicle. THE BOOTS GROUP LIMITED (16571857) was incorporated on 9 July 2025 — seven weeks before completion — under the name BLAZING STAR BOOTS SUPERCO (UK) LIMITED, and renamed afterwards. Bid vehicles are given deliberately opaque codenames while a deal is confidential, and the register preserves them: Chelsea’s Blueco companies and Asda’s Bellis entities elsewhere on this site are the same pattern, and “Blazing Star” is among the more colourful.

Second, a genuine trap. Two different companies have swapped names. Boots UK Limited (00928555) was formerly Boots the Chemists Limited; and a separate company, number 06344089, incorporated in 2007, was formerly Boots UK Limited and is now called Boots the Chemists Limited. Each holds the other’s old name. Searching by name will give you the wrong company; the numbers are the only reliable identifier — the same warning this site gives on the Sky page, where British Sky Broadcasting Group’s name also moved between entities.

Ownership history and changes

Boots was founded in Nottingham in 1849 and was a listed British company for most of the twentieth century.

• 2006 — merged with Alliance UniChem, Pessina’s pharmaceutical wholesaler, to form Alliance Boots.
• 2007 — taken private by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Pessina, in what was then the largest European leveraged buyout, and the company left the London Stock Exchange.
• 2012–2014 — Walgreens buys in progressively, completing full ownership and forming Walgreens Boots Alliance.
• 28 August 2025 — Sycamore Partners completes its acquisition and separates Boots into a standalone company.

So Boots has been private equity owned twice in twenty years, with an American listed parent in between. It has not been a British-owned public company since 2007.

Related companies and brands

Boots owns No7, Soltan, Botanics and Boots Pharmaceuticals among its own labels, and operates the Boots Opticians and Boots Hearingcare businesses.

It is no longer connected to Walgreens, which is now a separate Sycamore-owned company rather than a parent. The two shared an owner until 2025 and share one again only in the sense that both sit in the same private equity portfolio — which is common ownership, not a group relationship.