Britain's Reckitt Benckiser has agreed to buy Boots Group's non-prescription drugs business for a higher-than-expected £1.926 billion ($2.8 billion) in cash bringing its Lemsip and Disprin cold remedies together with Boot's Nurofen painkiller.
The British health and beauty group Boots, which is seeking to shore up its planned merger with Alliance Unichem, said it intends to return around £1.43 billion (€2.08 billion) to its shareholders via a special dividend.
Reckitt, the world's biggest household cleaning goods group, and British drug group GlaxoSmithKline Plc had been seen as frontrunners from the six companies which put in final bids for Boots Healthcare International (BHI) last month.
The unit was initially expected to fetch around £1.2 billion but was pushed higher as bidders saw they could extract significant cost savings by adding Boots' products to their owns existing brands.
Reckitt will add the Boots business, which also includes Clearasil skin products and Strepsils throat lozenges to its health and personal care division, which includes antiseptic Dettol, depilatories Veet and heartburn treatment Gaviscon.
Boots plans to buy Alliance to create a pan-European drugs retailer and distributor with more than £13 billion in sales. But the tie-up, which has received a cool reception from investors, is conditional upon it selling BHI.