September 30, 2024
Stefano Pessina
Walgreens chairman watches his fortune shrink Following a failed health care pivot, the company’s stock has hit lows not seen since the 1990s I By Katherine Davis AS WALGREENS BOOTS ALLIANCE RUNS OUT OF OPTIONS to turn itself and its stock price around, so too does the fortune of its single largest shareholder and executive chairman: Stefano Pessina, the chief architect of a decadelong plan that’s put the pharmacy retail giant into a financial bind. Following an expensive and failed health care pivot kick-started by Pessina amid challenging retail and pharmacy landscapes, Walgreens’ stock has hit lows not seen since the 1990s. With its stock trading at about $8 on Sept. 23, Deerfield-based Walgreens is among companies with the 10 worst-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year, falling 67%. More than $14 billion of value has been lost year to date, with Walgreens’ market capitalization sitting at
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See WALGREENS on Page 19
As it turns out, Chicago’s pandemic exodus wasn’t as bad as it seemed By John Pletz
The most famous move by a Chicago tax filer during the COVID pandemic was hedge fund titan and Florida native Ken Griffin, who moved to the Miami area. | BLOOMBERG
Plenty of people picked up and moved from Chicago during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic — just not as many as you might think. Although it was the largest exodus from Chicago in five years, it wasn’t nearly as severe as those seen in other big cities, such as New York, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of
IRS data on where people filed their taxes from one year to the next. In 2021, 47,374 more tax filers left the Chicago area than arrived — a 64% jump from 2019, the year before the pandemic. But the surplus of tax filers leaving New York was 103% higher than before the pandemic. In San Francisco, the difference between departing and incoming tax filers was 274% greater than 2019. The net number of depart-
ing tax filers was 99% higher in Los Angeles, while Boston was 98% higher. Departures from San Diego, the other city highlighted in the study, were up 54%. “Chicago’s losses in the pandemic were the continuation of a steady leak rather than a pipe suddenly bursting,” says Alan Berube, who conducted the study for Brookings. Like Los Angeles, New York See EXODUS on Page 16
VOL. 47, NO. 38 l COPYRIGHT 2024 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
GREG HINZ How two dysfunctional relationships are hindering a new Bears-Sox stadium deal. PAGE 2
CRAIN’S LIST See our updated ranking of the area’s largest woman-owned companies. PAGE 13
Emily Heisley Stoeckel