Stefano Pessina

Stefano Pessina said in July 2020 that he would step down as CEO once the drugstore company found a new leader. Mr. Pessina, one of Walgreens’ biggest individual investors, will stay on the company’s board and serve as executive chairman. This winter his Alliance Boots signed on to supply cosmetics to Carrefour, Europe's largest retailer and the second largest in the world behind Wal-Mart. The pharmacy giant bought a majority stake in German drug whole seller Anzag for $200 million last October. The former nuclear engineer turned his family's ailing Naples drug wholesaler into Alliance UniChem Group, which merged with U.K. pharmacy chain Boots Group in 2006 to form Alliance Boots. It went private in $22 billion deal in 2007 with financing from private equity firm KKR. Today Alliance Boots has more than 115,000 employees in more than 20 countries. Stefano Pessina is Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, having been appointed as a non-executive Director of Walgreens in August 2012. Prior to this, he was Executive Chairman of Alliance Boots since July 2007. Pessina previously served as Alliance Boots Executive Deputy Chairman. Prior to the merger of Alliance UniChem and Boots plc, Pessina was Executive Deputy Chairman of Alliance UniChem, previously having been its Chief Executive for three years through December 2004. Pessina was appointed to the Alliance UniChem Board in 1997 when UniChem merged with Alliance Santé, the Franco-Italian pharmaceutical wholesale group which he established in Italy in 1977. Pessina also serves on the Board of Directors of Galenica AG, a publicly-traded Swiss healthcare group, and a number of private companies.