Walgreens

Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) closed at $51.45 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.81% move from the prior day. […]

Corporate executives at Walgreens knew of complaints from pharmacy employees that high stress levels on the job had led to some errors in filling prescriptions, but removed the findings from a presentation, according to the New York Times. […]

(Bloomberg) -- Over decades of dealmaking, Stefano Pessina turned his family’s Italian wholesale pharmaceutical business into the largest retail pharmacy in the U.S. and Europe.Now filings show how a trio of tax havens support the significant wealth the chief executive officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. has amassed in that time.Pessina, who lives in Monaco, dissolved a Luxembourg company that controlled his stake in Walgreens and replaced it with a new one. He controls that entity through another based in the Cayman Islands, according to filings last month.He owns more than 16% of the Deerfield, Illinois-based retail pharmacy, which makes up the bulk of his $10.2 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.“This is a perfect example of someone doing everything they can to use the tax haven regime to protect their wealth,” said Richard Murphy, professor of international political economy at City University of London.Pessina declined to comment through a Walgreens spokesperson.Complex LengthsPessina’s holding company in the Cayman Islands was set up more than a decade ago, but the extent of the structure has only recently become clearer.The disclosures illustrate the lengths many of the world’s richest people go to manage and protect their wealth. Two years ago, four Chinese tycoons transferred more than $17 billion into family trusts with the ownership structures involving various Caribbean jurisdictions. Tina Green, who lives in Monaco and is married to U.K. retailer Philip Green, received a 1.2 billion pound ($1.5 billion) dividend from the couple’s holding company that went untaxed.Pessina, 78, is a citizen and long-term resident of Monaco, where inhabitants don’t pay annual property, capital gains or council taxes. It’s a similar situation in the Cayman Islands, which has no direct tax regime. Last year, the International Monetary Fund singled out Luxembourg as a global center for “empty corporate shells” because of the amount of foreign investment.There’s nothing empty about Pessina’s Luxembourg companies, with the one holding his stake reporting assets of more than 6 billion euros ($6.5 billion) at the end of 2018.Wealthy individuals often have legitimate reasons for using offshore tax havens. U.S. hedge funds and other money managers pool assets into Cayman Islands master funds to reduce financial and administrative costs. They can also offer protection against unstable political regimes in investors’ home countries.Tax HavenOn the flip side, the lack of transparency has made some of these jurisdictions accommodating places for kleptocrats, drug traffickers and money launderers to stash ill-gotten gains. This week, the European Union added the Cayman Islands to its tax haven blacklist, leaving the British overseas territory facing reputational damage and higher scrutiny over financial transactions.The Cayman Islands government said Tuesday it has begun the process to be removed from the list as early as this year. Pessina’s holding company -- Alliance Participations Ltd. -- falls outside the scope of the EU’s issue with the Cayman Islands, which focuses on investment funds in the territory.Other nations on the EU blacklist include Panama and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein owned an island.Pessina is the largest shareholder in Walgreens and has received more than $1.5 billion in dividends through his career, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index. He’s one of Monaco’s richest residents and has hobnobbed over the years with royalty and fellow billionaires visiting the city-state.Cayman TrustPessina’s Monaco citizenship lessens his need to focus on taxes, but there are still potential perks to his offshore set-up. Luxembourg has generous exemptions for the proceeds of liquidated companies, while the Cayman Islands has no withholding tax on dividends. Pessina’s native Italy applies tax rates of as much as 26% for such windfalls, according to accounting firm KPMG.Alliance Participations, established in 2006, has only been mentioned previously in a handful of filings unrelated to Pessina’s holdings. Filings last decade also disclose a trust affiliated with Pessina in the Cayman Islands, where his long-term partner and Walgreens co-Chief Operating Officer Ornella Barra has a separate holding company.Pessina previously ran Alliance Boots, which he acquired with KKR & Co. in 2007. The transaction came at the height of the buyout boom and underscored the difficulty of financing jumbo take-private deals, as banks struggled to find buyers for the loans to pay for the transaction.More recently, Walgreens was approached by KKR about a potential deal to take the company private in what would be the largest leveraged buyout in history, Bloomberg reported in November. Pessina and the company have declined to comment on any talks.To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Stupples in London at bstupples@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Steven Crabill, Peter EichenbaumFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P. […]

After General Electric's (NYSE:GE) wretched performance from 2016 through 2018, those who chose to invest in GE stock in 2019 probably made out pretty well. GE delivered a solid performance, gaining over 53% in value for the year. And it hasn't run out of steam yet -- so far in 2020, GE stock is up almost 15%. The apparent turnaround in the company's fortune has caught the attention of analysts, many of whom are feeling quite bullish.Source: testing / Shutterstock.com And what's more, one of Canada's largest investment agencies significantly increased its holdings in GE during the last quarter of 2019.Given what General Electric has been doing for the past year, is now the time to consider GE stock for your own portfolio?InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips Three Brutal Years for GE InvestorsGeneral Electric has been around for nearly 130 years and it has grown to have many lines of business. So it's not surprising that the company has had its ups and downs -- as has GE stock. Since 2000, GE has had a particularly tumultuous run, and the period between 2016 and 2018 was especially tough on investors. * 7 'Strong Buy' Stocks With Over 50% Upside Potential The headlines from that time told the story: "GE Shares Drop to 9-Year Low as Weak Power Business Stumbles," "How GE Went From American Icon to Astonishing Mess," "What the Hell Happened at GE?" and from InvestorPlace's Lawrence Myers, "The Disaster That is General Electric Company Stock."In 2018 alone, General Electric lost $90 billion in market value. Adding insult to injury, GE -- the last remaining original member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average -- got the boot. After more than a century in the index, its spot was taken by Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ:WBA). BCI Ups Its Investment in GEWhile General Electric was clearly in trouble, there was one positive sign in the fall of 2018. The company hired a new CEO. In October of that year, Larry Culp became CEO of General Electric -- the first company outsider to hold that position -- and he had a turnaround plan.As Culp began to put that plan into action, GE still had further to drop (it was trading in the $7 range by December 2018), however in 2019 GE stock began to recover. Its growth of over 54% for the year got the attention of investors. As reported by Barron's, one of those investors was British Columbia Investment Management (BCI). The agency that manages the Canadian province's public assets had a portfolio worth 153.4 billion CAD in 2019. And BCI made the call in the fourth quarter to buy another 677,8722 shares of GE, increasing its stake in the company to 2.1 million shares.BCI describes its investment strategy:"We are driven by long-term considerations. As our clients have obligations that extend beyond 70 years, we invest in quality assets and stable companies with the potential to appreciate in value and provide reliable cash flows in the years to come." In other words, this is not an agency that's prone to gambling on dicey stocks. Bottom Line for GE StockGeneral Electric is not out of the woods yet. A year of recovery is a positive sign, but the company has a long way to go to get anywhere near its glory days. Investors today are celebrating the fact that GE stock is close to breaking the $13 ceiling -- and analysts have a $13.91 average 12-month price target for the stock. That's still less than half of what GE was trading for just three years ago.BCI and others that invest now are obviously taking on some risk. However, with General Electric showing signs that Larry Culp's turnaround plan is working, the potential long-term payoff is significant.As of this writing, Brad Moon did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. More From InvestorPlace * 2 Toxic Pot Stocks You Should Avoid * 7 'Strong Buy' Stocks With Over 50% Upside Potential * 5 Emerging Markets ETFs to Consider as 2020 Rebound Plays * 4 Stocks to Buy No Matter Who Wins the 2020 Election The post Institutional Investors Indicate Better Days Are Ahead for General Electric appeared first on InvestorPlace. […]

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