A Canadian family that already owns Shoppers Drug Mart has agreed to buy Boots for US$8.9 billion including debt. Half the equity will belong to a Toronto insurer, and nothing closes until 2027.
The chain John Boot founded in Nottingham in 1849 is about to be chaired by a man who runs a Canadian grocery empire. Galen Weston, chairman of Wittington Investments in Canada and chief executive of George Weston Limited, takes the chair at Boots once the purchase completes, which it has not yet done. The money arrives from two directions, one family and one insurer, and the shop where you buy paracetamol is only part of what changed hands on paper.
A word on method. Every figure below is attributed to whoever published it: the headline price comes from the joint announcement by Fairfax Financial Holdings and Wittington on 7 October 2026, and the sterling equivalent from UK press conversion. Numbers reported before the agreement was signed are labelled as estimates. On the family’s own wealth, the deal coverage placed the Westons fifth on this year’s Sunday Times Rich List without carrying the accompanying sum, so no net worth is printed here. DDW ranks the richest families in the UK separately.
1. Wittington Investments, the Weston family’s Canadian holding company, agreed to buy Boots for about US$8.9 billion
Fairfax announced on 7 October 2026 that it had entered into agreements to partner with Wittington Investments, Limited, the private holding company of the Weston family based in Canada, to acquire The Boots Group for a total purchase price of approximately US$8.9 billion including assumed debt. UK outlets converted that to £6.7 billion. CBC put it at almost $12.7 billion Canadian, which is the version Loblaw shoppers in Ontario will have read over breakfast. Before confirmation, on 1 October, reports valued the deal at around £7 billion, with the Wall Street Journal first reporting the talks; that was an estimate, since superseded. Talks had reportedly stalled in August 2026 after the Weston side lowered its offer and Sycamore Partners rejected it.
2. Galen Weston becomes chairman of Boots on completion, expected in the first quarter of 2027
Weston was born in Dublin on 19 December 1972, the second child of W. Galen Weston and Hilary Weston, who served as Lieutenant Governor of Ontario from 1997 to 2002. He is chairman and chief executive of George Weston Limited, chairman of Loblaw Companies Limited, chairman of President’s Choice Bank and a director of Wittington Investments Limited. His father died on 12 April 2021, aged 80. RTÉ reported that the son will become chairman of Boots once the transaction closes, and the company statement carried his pitch:
“Boots is one of Britain’s most enduring businesses, with a rich heritage, a trusted name and a vital role in everyday life across the UK and Ireland. We have great respect for Boots’ legacy and leading market position. We see a meaningful opportunity to make a great business even better, through stable, long-term ownership, further capital investment and renewed operating focus required to serve customers with excellence for generations to come.”
That is from the joint Fairfax and Wittington statement of 7 October 2026, which also sets out the structure below. The transaction remains subject to regulatory approval and is expected to complete in the first quarter of 2027, so anyone writing that the Westons own Boots today is running ahead of the paperwork.
3. Fairfax Financial, chaired by Prem Watsa, is providing up to US$2.3 billion for half the equity
Fairfax entered into an equity commitment letter agreeing to provide up to approximately US$2.3 billion of the purchase price, and following closing it is expected to own 50 per cent of the equity of Boots, with Wittington holding operational control. Watsa, born 5 August 1950, founded Fairfax and runs it as chairman and chief executive from Toronto. In the same announcement he said Fairfax was pleased to partner with Galen Weston and the Wittington team, citing the family’s record in Canadian pharmacy and beauty retail, and called Wittington an excellent steward and a terrific partner. Beyond the fifty-fifty equity split and the control point, the announcement did not break out further ownership detail within the Canadian structure. Two Toronto names, one Nottingham chemist.
4. The Primark Westons are a different branch of the family, and a different company with the same name
This is where most confusion about who owns Boots begins. There are two separate legal entities called Wittington Investments. The British one was incorporated in 1941 in London, is chaired by Sir Guy Weston, and on the published ownership record is 79.2 per cent owned by the charitable Garfield Weston Foundation, with 20.8 per cent held by family members; it holds 54.5 per cent of Associated British Foods, the parent of Primark, plus 100 per cent of Fortnum & Mason and Heal’s. Associated British Foods reported revenue of £19.459 billion for 2025. The Canadian Wittington, the Boots buyer, is the controlling shareholder of George Weston Limited and, through it, Loblaw Companies Limited. Same dynasty, descended from W. Garfield Weston, who lived from 1898 to 1978 and set up the foundation in 1958. Different company, different branch, different cheque.
5. Sycamore Partners and the Pessina family are selling Boots but keeping Mexico and Germany
The exit is not total. Sycamore, in partnership with Stefano Pessina and his family, retains The Boots Group’s interests in Farmacias Benavides in Mexico and Alliance Healthcare Deutschland. Pessina has stepped down as executive chair and stayed on as a director. Sycamore completed its $10 billion acquisition of parent company Walgreens Boots Alliance in August 2025 and spun Boots off as a standalone business, The Boots Group; Stefan Kaluzny, Sycamore’s managing director, noted on 7 October that the firm had re-established Boots as a standalone company a year earlier. Eighteen months between buying the parent and agreeing to sell the British chemist is brisk work by any standard, though the two transactions cover different assets and the comparison stops there.
6. The purchase covers around 1,800 shops, Boots Opticians, No7 and the Thailand business
The agreement takes in Boots’ retail operations in the UK and Ireland, Boots Opticians, the No7 Beauty Company, and the Thailand and franchised businesses. Boots operates from around 1,800 stores across the UK and Ireland and employs more than 50,000 people, which makes this one of the larger private transfers of British high-street employment in recent memory. It also closes a door: trade coverage reported that the sale ends speculation about a London stock market listing for Boots, an outcome the City had been discussing since the Sycamore spin-off. No7 goes with the shops. So does the eye test.
7. The Westons owned Selfridges from 2003 to 2021 and sold it at a price never formally disclosed
Britain has been here before with this family. The Canadian Weston group owned Selfridges for nearly two decades, with Alannah Weston, born 8 January 1972 in Dublin and Galen’s older sister, serving as chairman of Selfridges Group and a director of the family holding company. The sale to the Thai-Austrian consortium of Central Group and Signa was agreed in December 2021; the purchase price was not formally disclosed but was close to £4 billion, or $5.4 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the transaction cited at the time, and some reports date the end of Weston ownership to 2022. The pharmacy and beauty credentials Watsa invoked are Canadian: Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart. Boots will be the family’s second attempt at a British institution, bought four years after they sold the first.
What changes behind the counter, and when
Alex Baldock, the former Currys chief executive, was recently appointed chief executive of Boots and the announcement gives no indication that the operating leadership changes with the ownership. Weston’s stated plan is stable long-term ownership, further capital investment and renewed operating focus, and in an email to the Globe and Mail he framed the purchase as welcoming the UK’s pharmacy, health and beauty business into the Canadian group’s companies. Nothing about the competition process is settled: regulatory approval is pending and the parties expect to complete in the first quarter of 2027. Until that clears, the owner of Boots is still Sycamore Partners, the name over 1,800 doors is still Boots, and the man who will chair it is still running a supermarket in Toronto.
Cover photograph: Canadian Film Centre via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
