Welcome to the Wall Street Shuffle in the Money Russell.

Welcome to the MoneyMaze podcast. I'm Simon Brewer and along with my co-founder, Will Campion.

We created this show in 2020 to explore and unravel some of the mysteries surrounding the investment and business worlds.

You need the luck to make a buck if you want to be good.

Episodes are available on audio via most podcast platforms and on video via our YouTube channel and we're active on all major social media platforms to stay up to date with every episode

please do sign up to our newsletter at money mazepod podcast.com. We'd like to thank you for

listening. If we could ask one favor, we'd love you to tell a friend or colleague about us. Thank you. In a world where competitive survival has become rarer, one UK retail institution has survived for 175 years, remained a trusted brand, has over 50,000 employees, 2,000 stores, 4,000 pharmacists, and has 85% of the UK's population living

in within 10 minutes of a store. It's Boots, of course. Today, part of U.S. Walgreens Boots

Alliance, an entity with sales of over 140 billion, and one of the largest purchases

of prescription drugs. We thought it timely to explore the future of retail,

the big drivers of change, the overload of Western health systems, and how pharmacy dispensers

may play a role, along with technology, the power of data and what customers want. So not much.

So, however, we have in front of us, Seb James, CEO of Boots. Welcome to the Money

Mays podcast. Well, thank you very much, Simon. I'm very flattered to be asked. I know that

Money Mays has had to turn away over 700 people to its podcast, so I feel very privileged to be here.

Fantastic. Well, we're here in London. It's early May. It's a beautiful evening, dare I say that, and you're so busy that the only way I could

get time on your diary was to persuade you to come and have a glass of wine at my home, and now you've said

no to the wine. Well, I need to stay sober for you. So let's just jog back. You go from school to

Morden College, Oxford. Our mutual friend Will Camping described you as a polymath, and that you could have pursued any number of careers, yet you opted for management consults at Bain and Co.

I don't know whether he was right about the polymath. We're going to find that out.

But what options did you actually weigh up?

Yeah. So when I left university, there were two paths that were sort of, you know, the glamorous ones to pursue

...