In profit …

The group behind the Boots high-street chain is set to unveil fresh plans for global domination this week, to coincide with its delivery of another sharp uplift in annual profit.

Coalition policies blamed for accelerating trend away from most generous retirement schemes

Alliance Boots, the high street chemist that is selling nearly half the company to the US firm Walgreens, is in talks with the group behind the grocer Budgens about stocking its food products in Boots' outlets.

Stefano Pessina, the executive chairman of Alliance Boots, mounted a vigorous defence yesterday of his plans to sell the high street chemist and pharmaceuticals giant to the US drugstore chain Walgreens in a cash and shares deal worth $16.2bn (£10bn).

Big cost savings in £10bn takeover by US giant will come from economies of scale, chairman insists

Walgreens says it filled 819m prescriptions in its last financial year

In profit ...

If you ask Stefano Pessina whether he pays enough tax, expect derision. The Italian chairman of Alliance Boots has been carping about the anti-business sentiment in the UK. The "general atmosphere" is barely tolerable, he grumbles. People don't show enough respect. And the state of the ice-cream. Don't get him started on the ice-cream. Life's tough for billionaire private-equity kings. It's a wonder they put up with the rest of us.

Everyone deserves a second chance. So those who have raised eyebrows at the news that Andy Hornby, the man in charge at HBOS when the bank hit the credit crunch buffers, has been appointed to run the bookmaker Coral, should bite their tongues. In any case, Hornby, who stood down from a stint at Alliance Boots earlier this year, knows a thing or two about gambling. OK, so the bets HBOS made didn't quite come off, but they were of an order of magnitude that Coral will never have to face.

Alliance Boots, the wholesale pharmaceutical and retail health and beauty retail giant, has launched a vigorous defence of its UK tax payments.

Alliance Boots has cited "stress" as being among the key reasons why Andy Hornby left his role as group chief executive this year.

He did it for private equity, helping to invent the business in its modern form and now he wants to do it for King's Lynn too. Jon Moulton has given businessmen in the Norfolk town a pep talk, advising them that they are in "the very best part of the UK for small and medium businesses to flourish". Not that he actually made it to their locality, you understand, appearing at the event courtesy of a video conferencing facility.

Among the many bank bosses vilified after the British banking crisis, only Andy Hornby bounced straight back. After he lost his grip on HBOS and it had to be rescued from collapse, he was quickly rehired by Boots as chief executive.