Easy target

30 April 2007 By Simon Nixon

The Boots chairman blames stupid analysts for failing to spot the true value of the UK pharmacy echoing the complaints of other bosses. Too many analysts are prisoners of oldfashioned thinking. The result has been huge opportunities for private equity and hedge funds.

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Sir Nigel Rudd has attacked retail analysts who failed to spot the value in Alliance Boots, the UK pharmacy chain which recently agreed an £11.1bn bid from buyout group KKR. As chairman of Boots, Rudd oversaw the £7.8bn merger with Alliance Unichem last year.

"When I did the Alliance Boots deal, everyone hated it," he told the Financial Times. "The greatest pleasure out of all of this has been the analysts. I actually love that. They are so stupid most of them... they are very bright or stupid. What I saw in Boots was a pharmacy... and what was more logical than merging it with a chemist. And they didn't get it."

In early March, before the KKR bid, only four of 21 analysts rated the shares a buy, with 10 on a sell.

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