On 7 October 2026, Wittington Investments, the private holding company of the Canadian branch of the Weston family, signed an agreement to buy Boots, the British pharmacy chain. The sellers are the private equity firm Sycamore Partners and the family of Stefano Pessina. The price is $8.9 billion (about £6.7 billion). Fairfax Financial, the Toronto holding company led by Prem Watsa, is Wittington’s partner in the deal.
For families, the interesting part is who is selling and who is buying. A private equity owner that took control of Boots about a year ago is selling to a family that promises “stable long-term ownership”. The sale also ends, for now, the plan to bring Boots back to the London Stock Exchange.
What is being bought
The deal covers Boots’ shops in the UK and Ireland, Boots Opticians, the No7 Beauty Company, and Boots’ business in Thailand and its franchises. Founded in Nottingham in 1849, Boots has more than 1,800 stores and 50,000 staff, according to Reuters. Sycamore and the Pessinas keep two other parts of the old Boots Group, in Mexico and Germany.
Galen G. Weston, chair of Wittington, will become chair of Boots. Alex Baldock, who joined Boots as chief executive in September, will run the business day to day. The first reports did not say how the ownership is split between Wittington and Fairfax, how much of the price is borrowed, or when the deal will close. Either way, this is a family with a partner, not one family cheque.
How Sycamore got here
In March 2025 Sycamore agreed to take Walgreens Boots Alliance, the American parent of Boots, private, for an equity value of about $10 billion and a total value of up to $23.7 billion including debt. The Pessina family reinvested its whole stake. The deal closed on 28 August 2025, and the group was split into five standalone companies, one of them The Boots Group.
Sycamore then had two routes to cash for Boots: a sale or a listing. Earlier in 2026, Australia’s Sigma Healthcare walked away from talks about buying Boots privately. That left two options: a London listing or the Westons. The Westons won. Sycamore agreed the sale about 13 months after it took control.
Two Weston branches, two Wittingtons
The name Wittington causes confusion, because two different companies are called Wittington Investments, one for each branch of the family.
The business began with a Toronto bakery in the 1880s. George Weston’s son, W. Garfield Weston (1898 to 1978), built a second base in Britain: he founded Allied Bakeries in 1935, renamed Associated British Foods (ABF) in 1960. The family later divided along that line. His son Garry Weston chaired ABF in Britain; another son, W. Galen Weston, took over Loblaw in Canada in the early 1970s at his father’s request.
- Wittington Investments Limited (UK). Based in London and chaired by Sir Guy Weston. The Garfield Weston Foundation, a charity Garfield set up in 1958, owns 79.2% of it. According to Wittington’s 2025 annual report, it held 58.8% of ABF, the owner of Primark and Twinings, on 13 September 2025 (56.6% a year earlier). It also owns Fortnum & Mason and Heal’s.
- Wittington Investments, Limited (Canada). Based in Toronto and controlled by Galen G. Weston, who succeeded his father as controlling shareholder in December 2020. In August 2025 it held about 59.2% of George Weston Limited, which controls Loblaw (owner of the Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacy chain) and the property trust Choice Properties.
The buyer of Boots is the Canadian one. It already has British history: it owned Selfridges from 2003 to 2021. (We explain how holding companies and foundations fit together in Holding Structures in Plain English.)
Patient money against a fund’s clock
A private equity fund raises money for a fixed period and must give it back, so every purchase comes with a planned exit. The research firm Private Equity Info put the median holding period of companies sold in 2025 at about six years. Agreeing to sell Boots after about 13 months is fast even so, though it was part of a wider plan to break up Walgreens.
A family holding company has no such clock. It can own a business for decades, reinvest instead of paying out, and wait through a bad cycle. Wittington says it plans to upgrade stores, improve online shopping and expand health services. For a seller, a family buyer also offers something a listing cannot: one agreed price, paid at once, with no risk of a weak market on the day of the float.
What it means for London
Boots left the London market in 2007, when KKR and Stefano Pessina took Alliance Boots private, the first FTSE 100 company bought out by private equity. A float would have brought a famous name back to a market with few large new listings. Instead, Boots stays private. The broader point: patient family capital is now a real alternative to the stock market as an exit for a large company.
A fair caveat
“Long-term” is a promise, not a contract. The Westons will share Boots with Fairfax, a listed company with its own shareholders, and the deal still needs regulatory approval. The split between the partners and the amount of debt have not been reported. The family will also have more of its wealth in pharmacy retail, in two countries at once.
Five lessons to take away
- Know who sits across the table. A fund needs an exit; a family needs a reason to stay.
- Patient capital can win a sale. A buyer who does not need to resell can price in the long term.
- Check the exact entity. Two companies share the Wittington name, and they belong to different branches.
- Leading does not require owning everything. Wittington leads the deal and will chair Boots, while Fairfax shares the ownership.
- Even patient owners sell. Selfridges shows that a family holding period can be long without being forever.
Questions to bring to your advisors
If we sold our business, would a family buyer, a fund or the stock market serve us best, and why? If we bought one, how long could we really hold it? How much of our wealth already sits in one industry? These are questions to bring to your advisors, not advice.