LloydsPharmacy was the trading name of Lloyds Pharmacy Ltd, a British pharmacy company,[1] which went into liquidation in January 2024 with debts of £293m. It had around 17,000 staff and dispensed over 150 million prescription items annually. It was formerly owned by the Aurelius Group and previously the American McKesson Corporation.
Overview
The company was headquartered at Sapphire Court in the Walsgrave Triangle Business Park in Coventry, England. In 2021, Lloyds was the second-largest community pharmacy company in the UK.[2]
In 2020–2021, revenue from its online pharmacy LloydsDirect was 731% more than the previous year, though there was a 9.6% decrease in turnover for the company as a whole. In March 2021, there were 1,351 LloydsPharmacy branches, decreased from 1,427 in 2020.[3]
History
Lloyds Pharmacy, Garforth, Yorkshire, 2014
Lloyds Chemist began in 1973 when Allen Lloyd purchased his first pharmacy in Polesworth, Warwickshire, England, UK. It is estimated he made a £32 million fortune from the LloydsPharmacy empire.[citation needed]
It was purchased by Celesio AG in 1997, and was merged with Celesio's existing UK subsidiary AAH Pharmaceuticals' Hills Pharmacy network to form a network of 1300 pharmacies.[citation needed] Celesio was bought in 2014 by American healthcare company McKesson.[2]
In November 2013, the Daily Telegraph reported that "The prices of more than 20,000 drugs could have been artificially inflated, with backhanders paid to chemists who agreed to sell them". In particular it was alleged that Lloyds was charging the NHS £89.50 for packets of cod liver oil, when other suppliers could provide it for £3.15. NHS Protect had mounted an investigation.[4]
In December 2013 it was involved in a case where Quantum Pharmaceutical was fined more than £380,000 by the Office of Fair Trading over a cartel arrangement in which it carved up some of a multimillion-pound market in prescription drugs for care homes with Lloyds Pharmacy.[5]
In July 2015, Lloyd's announced the purchase of all 281 pharmacies in Sainsbury's supermarkets for £125 million[6] in a deal that transferred all 2500 Sainsbury's pharmacy employees to the company. In December 2015, the sale was referred to the Competition and Markets Authority for investigation.[7] The deal was approved and the outlets were rebranded as Lloyds. With the addition of Sainsbury’s pharmacies, there were around 1800 LloydsPharmacy branches around the UK, employing more than 19,000 people. In October 2017, Lloyds announced that it would close or sell 190 of its 1,600 shops in England and expand its use of digital channels.[8]
In 2016, Lloyds made a €12 million settlement to the Irish Health Service Executive over a dispute of phased dispensing to medical card holders. Lloyds put a patient’s monthly medication into four separate trays, one for each seven-day period. The drugs were supplied to the patient in a single visit. This boosted Lloyds income by up to €600 per year for each medical card holder.[9]
In June 2019, Lloyds acquired Echo, an online prescription fulfilment business in the UK, for an undisclosed sum.[10]
In April 2022, McKesson's UK businesses – including LloydsPharmacy, the wholesaler AAH, and a travel health service – were purchased by the Aurelius Group.[11][2] In January 2023, Lloyds announced that it would withdraw from all Sainsbury's in-store pharmacies during that year.[12]
In January 2024 it was confirmed that LloydsPharmacy had been placed into liquidation, with debts of £293 million (£228 million of which was owed to former parent Admenta UK). The last of the remaining LloydsPharmacy stores had been divested to new owners by 26 November 2023, at which point the chain ceased trading, with pharmacy staff transferred to their stores' new operators.[13]
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