Drugs, Walgreen | featured news

Drug retailer Walgreen Co is buying a 45 percent stake in European health and beauty group Alliance Boots for $6.7 billion in cash and stock, creating the world's biggest buyer of prescription drugs.

Drugstore operator Walgreen Co. says its fiscal fourth-quarter profit jumped 69 percent, boosted in part by a gain from the sale of its pharmacy benefits management business.

Walgreen posted a 1.6% drop in quarterly profit, but sales rose and the drugstore chain's gross profit margin improved.

Drugstore operator Walgreen will offer free clinic visits to the unemployed and uninsured for the rest of the year, providing tests and routine treatment for minor ailments through its walk-in clinics though patients will still pay for prescriptions.

Walgreen Co. executives are considering selling booze at its drugstores after phasing out beer and wine at all but a few hundred stores in the 1990s.