http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/business/after-merger-chief-to-leave-walgreen.html 2014-12-11 03:39:48 After Merger, Chief to Leave Walgreen Gregory Wasson will step down after the country’s largest drugstore retailer completes its acquisition of the British pharmacy chain Alliance Boots. === The president and chief executive of The board of Walgreen, the largest drugstore chain in the country, was scheduled to vote on the merger on Dec. 29. Walgreen’s chairman, James A. Skinner, will become Walgreens Boots Alliance’s executive chairman after Mr. Wasson’s retirement. Alliance’s chairman, Stefano Pessina, will become the combined company’s acting chief executive while the board searches for a permanent replacement. Mr. Wasson, 56, who became chief at the beginning of 2009 and first joined the company as intern more than three decades ago, has shepherded Walgreen through important transitions. But he also faced rising pressure from investors as the company’s earning sagged ahead of the Alliance deal. In 2010, Walgreen agreed to buy the beauty and health chain Duane Reade. And it recently agreed to purchase Alliance, a transaction that required Mr. Wasson to make some unusually tough choices. The company had to decide whether to pursue the tax advantages from moving its headquarters overseas, a move known as an inversion that has drawn criticism from some lawmakers in the United States. In August, Walgreen As retailers have struggled in the wake of the economic recession, they have come up with other ways to attract customers. Under Mr. Wasson’s leadership, Walgreen, which operates about 8,200 stores, has increased its retail pharmacy operations, offering simple medical services like flu shots that do not require the direct supervision of a doctor. “The future of retail pharmacy is to embrace retail medicine, and Walgreens is absolutely the leader of that space by all accounts,” said Skip Snow, a senior health care analyst at Forrester Research. “Under the current tenure is when that strategy was formulated and executed, and it is to the credit of the current tenure that that strategy occurred.” In a statement announcing his retirement, Mr. Wasson said he had achieved the goals he set when he became chief six years ago: “to transform the front end of Walgreens drugstores, to advance the role that community pharmacy plays in health care and to find the right partner to take Walgreens global.”