Alliance Boots has put in an offer to buy the Co-operative Pharmacy, C+D has learned.

The health and beauty giant made a bid for the Co-operative Group's pharmacy business last week, a well-placed source confirmed to C+D yesterday (May 19). However, it is unclear whether the offer is for all of the 782 branches.

The Co-operative Group had received "numerous expressions of interest" for its pharmacy business and expected a sale by the end of the year, a spokesperson said last week.

Alliance Boots' offer follows its decision to buy two Latin American pharmacy companies worth more than £800 million earlier this month. It also purchased a small pharmacy chain in Nottingham in April.

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	Last week, Alliance Boots revealed that its trading profits growth had ground to a halt in 2013-14, blaming "challenging markets" for a 0.4 per cent rise to £1.27bn. Although Boots UK's health and beauty division posted 2.1 per cent growth, its dispensing levels remained at 2012-13 levels.

In March, a business expert told C+D that Alliance Boots was unlikely to bid for the Co-operative Pharmacy because it already owned a pharmacy network of a "desirable size" and had other priorities.

Pharmacists have pledged more than £53 million to buy the Co-operative Pharmacy as part of the Co-op Consortium, which is unrelated to the Co-operative Group. The consortium would start negotiations to buy the pharmacies once it had secured £60m in pledges, it told C+D last month.

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