Walgreens to Appoint Starbucks Executive Roz Brewer as CEO

The shares of Walgreens, which has a market capitalization of about $ 43 billion, were up 7.4% after a few hours after The Wall Street Journal reported the change.

Starbucks said on Tuesday that Brewer was leaving in late February for a new position with another public company. Prior to joining the coffee shop chain, Ms. Brewer was CEO of Walmart Inc.’s

Sam’s Club Division for five years.

Ms. Brewer, 58, has been Starbucks chief operating officer and board member since 2017. She helped shift Starbucks to a focus on continuing operations during the pandemic and worked to diversify the company’s leadership. Starbucks said last fall that it would link executive pay to increased minority representation in its workforce and required antibiotic training for company leaders.

In 2019, Ms. Brewer joined the Amazon.com board Inc.

amid pressure on the company to add more diversity to the board. Amazon has been expanding more and more in the healthcare segment, becoming more of a competitor to companies like Walgreens and CVS. In 2018, Amazon bought the online pharmacy PillPack for $ 1 billion.

Walgreens, the largest drugstore chain in the United States, has been struggling to recover, an effort complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. Pessina, an Italian billionaire, took office five years ago, after the merger of Walgreens with the European pharmacy chain Alliance Boots.

Where rival CVS Health Corp.

became a healthcare giant through acquisitions of pharmaceutical benefits manager Caremark in 2006 and insurance company Aetna Inc., Walgreens abandoned all acquisitions after unsuccessful attempts to buy insurance company Humana Inc.

and pharmacy rival Rite Aid Corp.

Walgreens recently announced plans to sell much of its wholesale pharmacy business in Europe, narrowing its focus on its eponymous chain in the United States and the pharmacy chain Boots in the United Kingdom.

The reduction in store traffic amid the coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating Walgreens’ retail struggles, and the company’s efforts to become a healthcare provider have yet to take hold. The company is also expected to play a central role in administering the Covid-19 vaccine to the American public. Together with CVS, Walgreens worked with the federal government to administer doses at the country’s long-term care facilities.

In the last quarter, the profit of the drugstore chain fell 25%, even with the increase in general revenue and the company working to cut costs. Retail pharmacy sales increased 1.6% in the United States, well below expectations, and executives said revenue volumes were weaker than planned.

Last year, Walgreens was among the worst performing members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, with its shares falling 29.4%. The index gained 7.3% in 2020.

The first African American and the first woman to lead a Walmart business unit, Ms. Brewer joined the retail giant in 2006, after two decades at Kimberly-Clark Corp.

, where she started as a chemist. She graduated from Spelman College, where she chairs the board of trustees.

There are four black CEOs at Fortune 500: Kenneth Frazier, of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co.,

Marvin Ellison, of the hardware store chain Lowe’s Cos.,

Roger Ferguson Jr. of TIAA, a financial services company, and René Jones, who runs M&T Bank Corp.

In New York.

The number of women who run Fortune 500 companies reached a record high last year, with 37 and more women since then.

Write to Dana Mattioli at [email protected] and Cara Lombardo at [email protected]