Ex-UBS Boss Exits Family Office for $8 Billion Walgreens Fortune

(Bloomberg) — A former UBS Group AG executive has stepped down as head of billionaire Stefano Pessina’s family office, ending a decades-long business relationship that helped build the Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. chairman’s fortune.

Edoardo Spezzotti recently retired as chief executive officer of Ergeny, the Monaco-based private investment firm for Pessina and his wife Ornella Barra, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as the details are private. The 71-year-old was formerly vice-chairman of UBS’s wealth-management division and chairman of its family office unit.

He’s replaced by Gregory Doyle, who most recently held a senior investment role at Canadian conglomerate Kruger Inc.

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A representative for 82-year-old Pessina – who has a net worth of $7.2 billion through Walgreens Boots, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index – declined to comment.

Spezzotti spent more than a decade at UniCredit SpA before leaving in 2012 to join UBS. The Italian native, who also previously worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Merrill Lynch, left UBS after about six years to help establish Pessina’s family office.

While at UniCredit, Spezzotti was appointed in 2007 as head of the Milan-based lender’s markets and investment-banking division. Around that time, he informed Pessina that private equity firm KKR & Co. was interested in financing what became a $22 billion take-private deal for Alliance Boots, the European drug distributor that Pessina built over decades of dealmaking.

Edoardo, “a friend, came to visit me,” Pessina told Italy’s Capital magazine in a 2007 interview. “Over a coffee he tells me that KKR would be willing to support me in the acquisition.”

US pharmacy giant Walgreens bought Boots Alliance in two installments, completing the deal in 2014 to form the Deerfield, Illinois-based drugstore chain where Pessina is now executive chairman after previously working as CEO. He owns about 17% of the combined company.

Ergeny invests in public and private equities as well as fixed income on behalf of Pessina and his 70-year-old wife, who chairs the family office and holds an executive role at Walgreens Boots Alliance. The family office doesn’t focus on any specific sector but pays attention to certain themes such as food and water, energy transition and health-care innovation, according to its website, which lists an executive team of almost a dozen people.

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