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Business

Walgreens Unit Close to Roughly $9 Billion Deal With Summit Health

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A unit of

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.

WBA 3.78%

is nearing a deal to combine with a big owner of medical practices and urgent-care centers in a transaction worth roughly $9 billion including debt, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest in a string of acquisitions by big consumer-focused companies aiming to delve deeper into medical care.

The drugstore giant’s primary-care-center subsidiary, Village Practice Management, would combine with Summit Health, the parent company of CityMD urgent-care centers, in an agreement that could be reached as early as Monday, the people said.

Health insurer

Cigna Corp.

CI 0.73%

is expected to invest in the combined company, the people said.

There is no guarantee the parties will reach a deal, the people cautioned, noting that they are still hammering out details of an agreement.

Summit Health, which is backed by private-equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC, has more than 370 locations in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Central Oregon, according to the company’s website. Current and former physicians also own a large interest in the business.

Village Practice Management, which does business as VillageMD, provides care for patients at free-standing practices as well as at Walgreens locations, virtually and in the home. In 2021, Walgreens announced it had made a $5.2 billion investment in VillageMD, boosting its stake to 63%. At the time, Walgreens said the investment would help accelerate the opening of at least 600 Village Medical at Walgreens primary-care practices across the country by 2025 and 1,000 by 2027.

The expected deal follows a string of mergers involving companies like VillageMD and CityMD as big healthcare providers seek more direct connections with patients.

Amazon.com Inc.

in July agreed to purchase primary-care operator

1Life Healthcare Inc.,

which operates under the name One Medical, for about $4 billion. In September,

CVS Health Corp.

struck a deal to acquire home-healthcare company Signify Healthcare Inc. for $8 billion.

Cano Health Inc.,

which operates primary-care centers, has attracted interest from both CVS and insurer

Humana Inc.

in recent months, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Bloomberg a week ago reported VillageMD’s interest in Summit Health.

Walgreens appears to have pre-empted a sale process for Summit Health that was set to kick off next year, according to the people, who said the company was about to interview banks before it received interest from VillageMD.

Summit Health has been backed by Warburg Pincus since 2017, when it took a stake in CityMD, a large chain of New York City urgent-care centers.

Since that time, Warburg has helped the company complete multiple transformative acquisitions, including the 2019 merger of CityMD and multi-speciality medical-practice group, Summit Medical Group.

New York-based Warburg, which has more than $85 billion in assets under management, is no stranger to healthcare. The firm counts healthcare-IT business Modernizing Medicine Inc. and Ensemble Health Partners, a revenue-cycle management business for hospitals, among its portfolio companies.

—Anna Wilde Mathews contributed to this article.

Write to Laura Cooper at laura.cooper@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the November 7, 2022, print edition as ‘Walgreens Nears Deal For Urgent Care Firm.’

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World

Militants attack Mali’s main military base, situation ‘under control’

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KATI, Mali, July 22 (Reuters) – Islamist militants struck Mali’s main military base, just outside the capital Bamako, on Friday in a complex attack involving car bombs, but the armed forces said they had repelled the assault and had the situation under control.

Militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State have repeatedly raided bases across Mali during a decade-long insurgency concentrated in the north and centre but never so close to Bamako in the south.

Heavy gunfire rang out for about an hour early on Friday at the Kati camp, about 15 km (10 miles) northwest of Bamako. A convoy carrying the leader of Mali’s junta, Colonel Assimi Goita, later sped away from his house in Kati in the direction of Bamako, a Reuters reporter said.

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The military said in a statement that the assault involved two car bombs and was carried out by the Katiba Macina, a branch of al Qaeda’s local affiliate that is most active in central Mali.

One soldier died in the attack and six people were wounded, while seven assailants were killed and eight arrested, it said.

“The military staff wishes to reassure the population that the situation is under control and that it can go about its activities,” the military said.

After the attack, soldiers shot and killed a man outside the camp when his vehicle did not heed their orders to stop, witnesses told Reuters. The other person in the vehicle fled, they said.

The military also blamed Katiba Macina for several attacks on Thursday against bases in central Mali, which it said had killed one soldier and wounded 15.

Kati was the site of mutinies in 2012 and 2020 that led to successful coups, but camp residents told Reuters that the soldiers did not appear to be fighting among themselves this time.

Mali’s ruling junta came to power in an August 2020 coup. It staged a second coup in 2021 to force out a civilian interim president who was at odds with Goita.

Goita’s transitional government has sparred repeatedly with neighbouring countries and international powers over election delays, alleged army abuses and cooperation with Russian mercenaries in the fight against the Islamist insurgency.

Despite coming to power pledging to stamp out the insurrection, the junta has been unable to prevent the insurgents from extending their operations further south.

Last week, unidentified armed men killed six people at a checkpoint just 70 km east of Bamako. read more

The only major attack to hit Bamako occurred in 2015, when al Qaeda-linked militants killed 20 people at a luxury hotel.

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Reporting by Fadimata Kontao; Additional reporting and writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Edmund Blair, John Stonestreet and Nick Macfie

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Defiant junta rejects pressure to let Conde leave Guinea

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  • West African bloc fail to win Conde’s release
  • Coup leaders toppled Conde on Sept. 5
  • ECOWAS seeking to freeze junta’s financial assets

CONAKRY, Sept 17 (Reuters) – Guinea’s military junta said on Friday it would not bow to regional pressure and allow President Alpha Conde, detained since his overthrow on Sept. 5, to leave the country.

On Friday Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara and Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo paid a one-day visit to Conakry to ask coup leader Mamady Doumbouya, a special forces commander and former French Legionnaire, for Conde’s release.

Outtara had been hoping to leave Guinea with Conde, a senior regional government official told Reuters.

“The former president is and remains in Guinea. We will not yield to any pressure,” the junta said in a statement read on state TV.

Ouattara and Akufo-Addo, representing the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), held a separate meeting with Conde at the Mohamed VI Palace in Conakry, but flew out the country on Friday evening empty-handed.

Ouattara told Radio-Télévision Guinéenne (RTG) at Conakry airport before leaving: “I met my brother Alpha Conde, who is doing well. We will remain in contact.”

Akufo-Addo told RTG: “We’ve had a very frank and fraternal meeting with Doumbouya and his collaborators. I think that ECOWAS and Guinea are going to find the best way to move forward together.”

ECOWAS has demanded a return to constitutional rule since the special forces unit seized control of the presidential palace, detained Conde and declared itself in charge.

Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, new chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), speaks to journalists after a consultative meeting in Accra, Ghana September 15, 2020. REUTERS/Francis Kokoroko/File Photo

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The bloc agreed on Thursday to freeze financial assets of the junta and their relatives and bar them from travelling. The junta has not responded.

‘COUP-BELT’

Events in Guinea followed coups in Mali and Chad earlier this year that have raised fears of a democratic backslide in a region only just shedding its “coup-belt” reputation.

Guinea’s coup leaders have held a week of consultations with public figures and business leaders to map out a framework for a transitional government.

ECOWAS’s credibility in Guinea has been strained since 2018, when the bloc failed to condemn Conde for running for a third term in office last year, despite a law declaring that presidents must step down after two and widespread protests.

Ouattara himself used a constitutional change as an excuse to run for a third term last year, a move critics decried as illegal.

Following Thursday’s summit, during which ECOWAS also pressured Mali’s transitional government to hold elections by February 2022, the regional body said it would be reviewing protocols on democracy and good governance.

On departing the airport in Conakry, the ECOWAS motorcade passed dozens of pro-junta demonstrators brandishing signs.

One read: “ECOWAS does not decide for us.”

Reporting by Saliou Samb and Christian Akorlie; Additional reporting by Ange Aboa; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Edward McAllister, Philippa Fletcher, Andrew Cawthorne, William Maclean and David Gregorio

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

West African regional bloc suspends Guinea after coup

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CONAKRY, Sept 8 (Reuters) – West Africa’s main political and economic bloc suspended Guinea’s membership on Wednesday following a weekend military coup that ousted President Alpha Conde and dealt the latest in a flurry of setbacks to democracy in the region.

During a virtual summit, leaders from the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) demanded a return to the constitutional order and Conde’s immediate release, and also agreed to send a high-level mission to Guinea as soon as Thursday, said Burkina Faso’s Foreign Minister Alpha Barry.

“At the end of that mission, ECOWAS should be able to re-examine its position,” Barry told reporters.

He did not announce any immediate economic sanctions against Guinea, as ECOWAS imposed against Mali following a coup there in August 2020.

Some experts say ECOWAS’s leverage with Guinea could be limited, in part because the country is not a member of the West African currency union and not landlocked like Mali.

The economic bloc’s response is being closely watched amid criticism from pro-democracy advocates that it has not stood up robustly enough in recent months against democratic backsliding in West Africa.

ECOWAS remained silent last year as Conde and Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara sought third terms after changing constitutions that would have forced them to step down, moves denounced as illegal by their opponents.

Activists say this has contributed to West Africans’ loss of faith in democracy and made military coups more likely.

Mali’s military staged a second coup in May this year. ECOWAS said on Tuesday it was concerned transitional authorities there had not made sufficient progress toward organising elections next February as promised. read more

Special forces members take position during an uprising that led to the toppling of president Alpha Conde in Kaloum neighbourhood of Conakry, Guinea September 5, 2021. REUTERS/Saliou Samb

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PRISONER RELEASES

Guinea’s coup leader, Mamady Doumbouya, a former French legionnaire, has pledged to install a unified, transitional government but has not said when or how that will happen.

In an apparent gesture to Conde’s civilian opponents, at least 80 political prisoners detained by the president were released on Tuesday evening, many of whom had campaigned against his constitutional change.

Doumbouya also met the heads of Guinea’s various military branches for the first time on Tuesday, hoping to unify the country’s armed forces under the junta’s command.

Guinea’s main opposition leader, Cellou Dalein Diallo, who finished runner-up to Conde in three successive elections, told Reuters on Tuesday he would be open to participating in a transition back to constitutional governance.

In a statement on Tuesday evening, Conde’s party said it “noted the advent of new authorities at the head of the country” and called for the president’s swift and unconditional release.

Since the putsch, life in the streets of Conakry appears to have returned to normal, with some military checkpoints removed.

Fears that the power struggle could hinder Guinea’s production of bauxite, a mineral used to make aluminium, have begun to ease. The country’s largest foreign operators say they have continued to operate without interruption.

Aluminium hit a fresh 10-year high on Monday after news broke of unrest in Guinea, which holds the world’s largest bauxite reserves. Doumbouya has pledged that mining will continue unhindered.

Additional reporting by Christian Akorlie in Accra; Writing by Cooper Inveen and Aaron Ross, Editing by Hereward Holland, Timothy Heritage and Gareth Jones

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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