Walgreens Is Officially Privately Held With New CEO From Staples

Walgreens is officially privately held with a new chief executive who formerly ran Staples following the closing of the company’s $10 billion sale to private equity firm Sycamore Partners, the compny said August 28, 2025. In this photo is an aerial view, a sign is posted outside of a Walgreens store on January 04, 2024 in San Pablo, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

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Walgreens Boots Alliance is officially privately held with a new chief executive who formerly ran office supply retailer Staples following the closing of the company’s $10 billion sale to private equity firm Sycamore Partners.

Sycamore is acquiring the business in partnership with Stefano Pessina, who has been the company’s largest individual shareholder and former CEO, and his family, “who have reinvested 100% of their interests in WBA, demonstrating their ongoing support and confidence in the company’s future,” the companies said Thursday.

With the new owners brings a new CEO, replacing Tim Wentworth, who has run Walgreens for the last two years. Wentworth is being replaced by Mike Motz effective immediately, Walgreens said.

“Motz was formerly CEO of Staples US Retail, a Sycamore portfolio company,” Walgreens said in a statement. “Prior to that, he served as President of Shoppers Drug Mart, the No. 1 pharmacy chain in Canada. A seasoned leader with deep experience, Motz brings a renewed focus on retail, a customer-first mindset and significant operational discipline to guide Walgreens into its next chapter as a private
company.”

Wentworth will continue to serve as an ongoing director, Walgreens said. John Lederer, a former director of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. and a senior advisor
to Sycamore, has been appointed executive chairman of Walgreens.

“Today represents an exciting new chapter and a turning point for Walgreens,” said Motz. “As a private organization, alongside our dedicated team members, we are renewing our focus on our core pharmacy and retail platform, our stores and our customer experience—building on the progress that’s been made.”

Founded in 1901, Walgreens has been publicly traded since 1927, when it was first listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In December 2014, Walgreens completed its merger with Switzerland-based Alliance Boots and began trading on December 31, 2014 under the ticker symbol “WBA” to reflect a new corporate name, Walgreens Boots Alliance.

First announced in March, the private takeover of Walgreens called for Sycamore Partners to pay $11.45 per share — 29% above the December stock price for Walgreens. Sycamore also agreed to “one non-transferable right” to receive up to $3 in cash per Walgreens share “from the future monetization of WBA’s debt and equity interests in VillageMD, which includes the Village Medical, Summit Health and CityMD businesses,” the companies said of Walgreens’ primary care businesses.

The deal, rumored for months, comes after Walgreens, which had a market value of more than $100 billion a decade ago, undertook a failed in-store clinic rollout that led it to close hundreds of stores to reduce debt and stem financial losses.

Under former chief executive Roz Brewer, Walgreens spent billions of dollars investing in and operating physician-staffed clinic operator VillageMD.

Walgreens invested more than $6 billion in VillageMD under Brewer to take a controlling stake, but the company has already scaled back dramatically on the expansion of doctor practices and clinics the company opened. In 2020, Walgreens said it planned to open 500 to 700 “Village Medical at Walgreens” physician-led primary care clinics in more than 30 U.S. markets over five years, with the “intent to build hundreds more thereafter.”

But Wentworth, who replaced Brewer in October 2023, said a year ago that the company and its partner VillageMD had slowed the number of clinic openings in part because the operators haven’t been able to fill their “patient panels,” which are a certain number of individual patients under the care of a specific provider. The billions of dollars in losses on the VillageMD investment was largely to blame for a net loss of more than $8 billion for the company’s fiscal 2024.