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Shares in Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (Nasdaq: WBA) are up a modest amount after the company announced yesterday that it has agreed to be purchased by private equity firm Sycamore Partners. As of the time of this writing, WBA shares are up under 7% to $11.33. Heres what you need to know about the buyout and share movement. Walgreens is going private After years of financial struggles, publicly traded Walgreens announced yesterday that it has accepted a deal from private equity firm Sycamore Partners to be bought and taken private. Rumors of the deal were first reported earlier this week. Under the agreement, Sycamore will take the pharmacy chain private. The move will give the 125-year-old Walgreens more room to maneuver a turnaround without having to answer to Wall Street investors, notes the Associated Press. Walgreens has faced a rough six months in particular. Last October, the company announced it would close over 1,200 stores due to falling foot traffic and increased online competition. And in January, the companys stock price plunged after it announced that it would be suspending dividend payments to shareholders in order to redirect its capital allocation. Shares in Walgreens are down more than 49% over the last year. While we are making progress against our ambitious turnaround strategy, meaningful value creation will take time, focus and change that is better managed as a private company, Tim Wentworth, CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, said in a statement announcing the acceptance of Sycamores offer. Sycamore will provide us with the expertise and experience of a partner with a strong track record of successful retail turnarounds. WBA stock is upbut not by a lot Some would expect that when a company receives a buyout offer, its stock price may soar. But WBA stock is up just under 7% in premarket trading, as of the time of this writing, to $11.33. The reason for this is likely due to the fact that the Walgreens-Sycamore deal will see Sycamore pay WBA shareholders $11.45 per share to close the deal. In other words, it doesnt make sense for WBA stock to be bought above that price since shareholders would only get $11.45 per share if the deal does end up going through. Conversely, it doesnt make sense for WBA stock to be sold below that price if the deal ends up going through because shareholders know they could get $11.45 per share from Sycamore when the deal closes. However, the deal also offers the possibility for WBA investors “to receive up to $3.00 in cash per WBA share” in addition to the $11.45 per share price if certain conditions are met. Though Walgreens Boots Alliance says it has accepted the offer, the deal must still be approved by WBA shareholders and also receive regulatory approvals. If the deal passes both those thresholds, Walgreens and Sycamore say its transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter calendar year 2025. If that happens, WBA shares will no longer be listed on the Nasdaq as the company will become private.
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The discovery of a huge unexploded World War II-era bomb caused transportation chaos in Paris on Friday that included the suspension of high-speed rail links with London and Brussels and the closure of a vital road artery in the French capital, hobbling France’s busiest train station, dashing travelers’ weekend getaway plans and giving commuters a major headache.The cascade of transport woes spread from the rail to the road network, with Paris police announcing the closure of the A1 highway and sections of the capital’s always-busy ring road around the city, as bomb-disposal experts worked to make the half-ton explosive safe.Eurostar, operator of sleek high-speed trains through the Channel Tunnel that links England with the European continent, announced the cancellation of all its services to and from its Paris hub at Gare du Nord, France’s busiest rail station, and the U.K. and Belgian capitals.Travel plans were thrown into disarray.“There’s no solution. We’re going to call the hotel and stay one more day. And change our train ticket,” said Michel Garrot, a retired Parisian who found himself stranded in Brussels, which he’d been visiting with his wife.At London’s St. Pancras station, Eurostar’s London hub, travelers scrambled for alternatives. Fridays are invariably busy there with thousands of people leaving and arriving for weekend breaks. Passengers were advised to try taking trains to Lille in northern France, or fly to Paris.“We’re looking up flights, but our options are limited,” said Lauren Romeo-Smith, part of a group that had a birthday weekend in Paris planned.Another St. Pancras traveler, Lee Bailey, said that Eurostar had offered him a free rebooking or a refund, and an apology, but no compensation.“I’d like to go to a Michelin (starred) restaurant in Paris on their dime, but that’s not happening, apparently,” he told Sky News.Eurostar said that it “sincerely apologizes for the disruption and understands the inconvenience this may cause.”At Paris’ usually humming Gare du Nord station, bright red signs warning of disruptions greeted commuters. French national rail operator SNCF says the station habitually hosts 700,000 travelers per day, making it the busiest rail hub in both France and Europe. As well as towns and cities across northern France and the Paris suburbs, the station also serves Paris’ main airport and international destinations, including London, Brussels, and cities in the Netherlands.French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said that the huge disruptions were caused by the discovery of a bomb that weighed half a ton. Workers found it overnight while doing earthmoving works near the tracks in the Seine-Saint-Denis region that borders Paris to the north. Bomb disposal experts were called.Tabarot said that a “a quite large” security perimeter was set up around the bomb-disposal operation and people were evacuated. He urged commuters to postpone rail trips.Bombs left over from World War I or World War II are regularly discovered around France, but it’s very rare to find them in such a people-packed location. The SNCF said that rail traffic was stopped at the request of police. Sylvie Corbet in Brussels, and Jill Lawless in London, contributed to this report. Samuel Petrequin and John Leicester, Associated Press
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America’s butterflies are disappearing because of insecticides, climate change and habitat loss, with the number of the winged beauties down 22% since 2000, a new study finds.The first countrywide systematic analysis of butterfly abundance found that the number of butterflies in the Lower 48 states has been falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century, with 114 species showing significant declines and only nine increasing, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science.“Butterflies have been declining the last 20 years,” said study co-author Nick Haddad, an entomologist at Michigan State University. “And we don’t see any sign that that’s going to end.”A team of scientists combined 76,957 surveys from 35 monitoring programs and blended them for an apples-to-apples comparison and ended up counting 12.6 million butterflies over the decades. Last month an annual survey that looked just at monarch butterflies, which federal officials plan to put on the threatened species list, counted a nearly all-time low of fewer than 10,000, down from 1.2 million in 1997. Many of the species in decline fell by 40% or more. ‘Catastrophic and saddening’ loss over time David Wagner, a University of Connecticut entomologist who wasn’t part of the study, praised its scope. And he said while the annual rate of decline may not sound significant, it is “catastrophic and saddening” when compounded over time.“In just 30 or 40 years we are talking about losing half the butterflies (and other insect life) over a continent!” Wagner said in an email. “The tree of life is being denuded at unprecedented rates.”The United States has 650 butterfly species, but 96 species were so sparse they didn’t show up in the data and another 212 species weren’t found in sufficient number to calculate trends, said study lead author Collin Edwards, an ecologist and data scientist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.“I’m probably most worried about the species that couldn’t even be included in the analyses” because they were so rare, said University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Karen Oberhauser, who wasn’t part of the research.Haddad, who specializes in rare butterflies, said in recent years he has seen just two endangered St. Francis Satyr butterflies which only live on a bomb range at Fort Bragg in North Carolina “so it could be extinct.”Some well-known species had large drops. The red admiral, which is so calm it lands on people, is down 44% and the American lady butterfly, with two large eyespots on its back wings, decreased by 58%, Edwards said.Even the invasive white cabbage butterfly, “a species that is well adapted to invade the world,” according to Haddad, fell by 50%. “How can that be?” Haddad wondered. Butterfly decline as a warning sign for humans Cornell University butterfly expert Anurag Agrawal said he worries most about the future of a different species: Humans.“The loss of butterflies, parrots and porpoises is undoubtedly a bad sign for us, the ecosystems we need and the nature we enjoy,” Agrawal, who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email. “They are telling us that our continent’s health is not doing so well Butterflies are an ambassador for nature’s beauty, fragility and the interdependence of species. They have something to teach us.”Oberhauser said butterflies connect people with nature and that “calms us down, makes us healthier and happier and promotes learning.”What’s happening to butterflies in the United States is probably happening to other, less-studied insects across the continent and world, Wagner said. He said not only is this the most comprehensive butterfly study, but the most data-rich for any insect.Butterflies are also pollinators, though not as prominent as bees, and are a major source of pollination of the Texas cotton crop, Haddad said. Driest and warmest areas are worst for butterflies The biggest decrease in butterflies was in the Southwest Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma where the number of butterflies dropped by more than half in the 20 years.“It looks like the butterflies that are in dry and warm areas are doing particularly poorly,” Edwards said. “And that kind of captures a lot of the Southwest.”Edwards said when they looked at butterfly species that lived both in the hotter South and cooler North, the ones that did better were in the cooler areas.Climate change, habitat loss and insecticides tend to work together to weaken butterfly populations, Edwards and Haddad said. Of the three, it seems that insecticides are the biggest cause, based on previous research from the U.S. Midwest, Haddad said.“It makes sense because insecticide use has changed in dramatic ways in the time since our study started,” Haddad said.Habitats can be restored and so can butterflies, so there’s hope, Haddad said.“You can make changes in your backyard and in your neighborhood and in your state,” Haddad said. “That could really improve the situation for a lot of species.” Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer
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