Strong growth in own-brand health and beauty products and in pharmacy services will help Alliance Boots, Britain’s biggest pharmacy chain, to cope with tough trading conditions, its chief executive said.
“We’re certainly not expecting the economy to improve at all. We’re budgeting for a subdued environment,” chief executive Andy Hornby said in a telephone interview yesterday.
“Nevertheless, we believe we’re competing in attractive markets and our formula is working,” he said.
Hornby, who led mortgage bank HBOS before it was eventually bought by Lloyds in a government-brokered rescue last year, said sales of Alliance Boots’ own-brand goods, led by its No. 7 Protect & Perfect skincare range, were particularly strong.
He also had high hopes for pharmacy services like the BootsWebMD healthcare information portal and the Boots Employee Wellbeing Service, which allows businesses to combine online health assessments of staff with pharmacy-based services like blood pressure monitoring, cholesterol testing and advice.
Alliance Boots, taken private in 2007 in Europe’s biggest ever leveraged buyout, earlier announced record annual profits of more than £1 billion (US$1.5 billion).
The group also said it had cut net debt by £645 million to £8.39 billion.
Finance director George Fairweather declined to say how much it would reduce borrowings in the coming year, but said underlying cash generation would be similar to that in the year ended in March.
“We’ve generated about half a billion [pounds] of net cash. We would continue to expect to generate that sort of level of cash, excepting any particular M&A activities,” he said.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
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