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private equity
Why Walgreens’ New CEO Should Alarm Us
The man who oversaw massive store closures and job cuts at Staples is now in charge of one of America’s most important companies.
Dec 11, 2025
Sycamore Partners finalized its $18.8 billion acquisition of Walgreens this summer, relying on a staggering amount of debt to close the deal. However, a more innocuous decision may be the real warning sign that could spell doom for Walgreens and its workers: Sycamore installed Mike Motz, the CEO of Staples US Retail—another company it owns—as Walgreens’ new chief executive.
That appointment should alarm every patient, pharmacist, and community that depends on Walgreens. Motz took over at Staples US Retail in April 2019, the same month that Sycamore Partners added debt to Staples’ balance sheet to extract a $1 billion dividend for itself. Under Sycamore’s ownership, Staples has shuttered a third of its US stores, cutting tens of thousands of jobs. Just this September, Staples subsidiary Essendant announced hundreds of layoffs in Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, New Jersey. If 33% of Walgreens stores were to close, the fallout could be catastrophic: more than 70,000 layoffs and communities losing access to pharmacies and essential medications.
Sycamore Partners has developed a reputation for squeezing cash out of its acquisitions at the expense of long-term stability. The firm's history already contains documented, high-profile bankruptcies and mass layoffs. Belk and Nine West both went bankrupt while under Sycamore’s control. At Nine West, bankruptcy meant the closure of 70 stores and widespread layoffs. Belk, which Sycamore Partners acquired in a leveraged buyout in 2015, filed for bankruptcy in 2021 with $1.9 billion in funded debt. Aeropostale, meanwhile, claimed that onerous terms from Sycamore’s apparel sourcing arm helped drive it into bankruptcy.
Staples, one of Sycamore’s best-known acquisitions, has endured years of store closures since being taken private in 2017. With Sycamore in control, Staples closed roughly 33% of its stores. The decision to put the Staples CEO in charge of Walgreens signals that the same corporate strategy of mass closures may now be applied to one of America’s most important healthcare access points. The problem is not only who is running Walgreens, but also the strategy that the new executive represents.
The Walgreens acquisition is one of the largest private equity healthcare buyouts in history. That makes its outcome a bellwether for how Wall Street’s debt-fueled model could continue to reshape the healthcare sector.
Sycamore’s portfolio companies have also been cited repeatedly for workplace safety failures. Staples alone has had 37 Occupational Safety and Health Administration violations totaling more than $192,000 in fines since Sycamore acquired it—23 of them classified as serious, meaning hazards that could cause severe injury or death. Across Sycamore’s retail holdings, the absence of significant union representation has left workers without a collective voice to push back against these conditions.
Beyond leadership, the financial engineering behind this deal sets Walgreens up for trouble. Sycamore Partners relied on more than 70% debt ($13.33 billion out of $18.8 billion) to fund its acquisition of Walgreens, which is an unusually high level, compared to recent private equity buyouts. That level of leverage puts Walgreens on unstable footing from day one.
The risks of the usage of high levels of debt in private equity takeovers is well-documented. In the first quarter of this year alone, 70% of large US corporate bankruptcies involved private equity-owned companies. These bankruptcies followed a familiar script: Firms borrowed heavily to finance buyouts, extracted value from their portfolio companies, and left them unable to withstand market pressures or economic downturns. Walgreens now carries those same risks.
Sycamore Partners’ acquisitions have amassed it a portfolio of mostly retail companies, but now the Walgreens buyout brings the firm directly in contact with a public health system that hundreds of millions of Americans rely on daily. Many communities, particularly rural towns, low-income areas, and minority neighborhoods, have limited access to pharmacies.
Store closures in those communities wouldn’t just mean inconvenience; they could mean patients losing access to lifesaving medications, routine vaccinations, and basic health consultations. The potential job losses are equally severe. If tens of thousands more workers are laid off, that kind of shock would ripple across local economies, cutting off benefits and wages for tens of thousands of families.
The Walgreens acquisition is one of the largest private equity healthcare buyouts in history. That makes its outcome a bellwether for how Wall Street’s debt-fueled model could continue to reshape the healthcare sector. Unfortunately, the early warning signs are clear. A heavily indebted company, led by an executive imported from another Sycamore-owned retailer, looks less like a turnaround story and more like the setup for another collapse.
Sycamore Partners insists it can manage Walgreens successfully. But the history of the firm’s operation of its portfolio companies tells a different story. From bankruptcies at Belk and Nine West to sweeping layoffs at Staples, the firm’s track record speaks for itself. Local communities, workers, and patients may once again pay the price for Wall Street’s short-term gains.
Walgreens is more than just a household brand. For millions of Americans, it is a vital link to the healthcare system. By wresting control of Walgreens, and importing the same leadership that oversaw Staples’ store closures and job cuts, Sycamore Partners has put that link at risk. Unless something changes, the consequences could be measured not just in balance sheets, but in lost jobs, shuttered stores, and diminished access to care.
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'Shamelessly Corrupt': Trump Frees Private Equity Executive Convicted of Defrauding 10,000+ Investors
One elderly victim said they "lost a significant portion" of their retirement savings to David Gentile's $1.6 billion scheme.
Dec 01, 2025
In yet another gift to corporate criminals, President Donald Trump has reportedly used his executive authority to commute the seven-year prison sentence of a former private equity executive convicted of defrauding more than 10,000 investors of around $1.6 billion.
David Gentile, the founder and former CEO of GPB Capital, was convicted of securities and wire fraud last year and sentenced to prison in May, but he ended up serving just days behind bars. The New York Times reported over the weekend that the White House "argued that prosecutors had falsely characterized the business as a Ponzi scheme."
One victim said they lost their "whole life savings" to the scheme and are now living "check to check." Another, who described themselves as "an elderly victim," said they "lost a significant portion" of their retirement savings.
"This money was earmarked to help my two grandsons pay for college," the person said. "They had tragically lost their father and needed some financial assistance. So this loss attached my entire family."
In a statement following Gentile's sentencing earlier this year, FBI Assistant Director in Charge Christopher Raia—who was appointed to the role by Trump's loyalist FBI director, Kash Patel—said the private equity executive and his co-defendant, Jeffry Schneider, "wove a web of lies to steal more than one billion dollars from investors through empty promises of guaranteed profits and unlawfully rerouting funds to provide an illusion of success."
"The defendants abused their high-ranking positions within their company to exploit the trust of their investors and directly manipulate payments to perpetuate this scheme," said Raia. "May today’s sentencing deter anyone who seeks to greedily profit off their clients through deceitful practices."
Critics said Trump's commutation of Gentile's sentence sends the opposite message: That the administration is soft on corporate crime and rich fraudsters despite posturing as fierce protectors of the rule of law and throwing the book at the vulnerable.
"Trump will deport an Afghan living in the US with Temporary Protected Status if he is accused of stealing $1,000," said US Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.). "But he’ll set a white dude free who was convicted of stealing $1.6 billion from American citizens to go commit more crime."
After criticizing former President Joe Biden for commuting the sentences of death-row prisoners, Trump has wielded his pardon power to spare political allies—including January 6 rioters—and rich executives while his administration works to "delegitimize the very concept of white-collar crime."
Since the start of Trump's second term, his administration has halted or dropped more than 160 federal enforcement actions against corporations, according to the watchdog group Public Citizen. White-collar criminals reportedly view Trump as their "get-out-of-jail-free card."
"The most shamelessly corrupt administration in history," journalist Wajahat Ali wrote in response to the Gentile commutation.
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For-Profit Healthcare Makes Us Sick!
The harmful behaviors of profit-driven healthcare companies—from tax dodging to insurance denials to carelessness with patient safety—stem from the same illness: a disregard for the community they serve.
Nov 02, 2025
Even though most of us think of healthcare as a human right, the reality is that in the United States the provision of healthcare is big business. It places profits over people, demonstrating that priority through tax dodging, price gouging, insurance denials, and unsafe conditions for patients, as documented in a recent joint report from our two organizations, Americans for Tax Fairness and Community Catalyst.
The report, “Sick Profits,” highlights how seven healthcare corporations have together saved over $34 billion in federal taxes thanks to the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law recently extended by the current Trump administration and Republican Congress. They paid for those corporate tax breaks in part by cutting Medicaid and jeopardizing health coverage for 15 million people, and failing to preserve the enhanced premium tax credits for people buying health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplaces.
We currently have public policy that cuts taxes on corporations while ignoring nearly two-thirds of people who believe that big companies are not paying enough. Instead, healthcare corporations have each enjoyed hundreds of millions—in most cases, billions—of dollars in tax savings thanks to the Republican tax law, the most expensive part of which was a two-fifths cut in the corporate tax rate. They have also saved taxes by exploiting loopholes that the law (and its extension) failed to close, including in the accounting for stock options and the treatment of profits shifted offshore.
Not surprisingly, the companies examined in the report did not use their tax savings to lower prices, hire more providers, or improve patient care. No, the money went instead to higher executive compensation and increased payouts to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks.
We must demand more transparency, fairer tax policy, and better oversight of these institutions.
Additionally, companies are maximizing their profits by simply not paying for care. By demanding “preauthorization” for a dizzying number of procedures then routinely denying approval, insurers can save billions at the expense of their policyholders. High percentages of initial denials are overturned on appeal, showing that “no” is simply the initial default position, taken in the hopes that patients and doctors won’t push the issue. Claim denials often result in medical debt and can also disrupt treatment for chronic medical conditions, delay or deny access to lifesaving care, and lead to avoidable complications—or even death.
Claim denials affect the health and well-being of people every day. They are people like Little John Cupp, who began feeling short of breath and experienced swelling in his feet and ankles. His doctor recommended a catheter exam to determine whether the arteries in his heart were blocked. However, the medical benefits management company EviCore (owned by Cigna) twice denied the catheter exam while eventually approving a much lower-cost stress test. The delay in diagnosis proved catastrophic. Less than two days after Mr. Cupp received the stress test, he died of cardiac arrest.
The tragedy of the end of Mr. Cupp’s life demonstrates the incredibly real risks that the first obstacle to getting care creates. Unfortunately, clearing that hurdle and receiving approval for care does not ensure quality. You could find yourself getting treatment at a facility saving money for shareholders by reducing staff and failing to maintain safe and hygienic conditions. NBC News aired a six-part investigation of hospital-operator HCA Holdings that uncovered, in the words of our report, “roaches in the operating room, leaking ceilings, essentially unmonitored vital signs, overworked nurses, overcrowded emergency rooms, closed departments, and other threats to patient health and safety.”
Or you may receive care at a facility owned or controlled by private equity interests. One cautionary tale is Prospect Medical Holdings, which operated hospitals and other health facilities in multiple states and was driven into bankruptcy after it was acquired by a private equity firm that extracted over $650 million in debt-financed dividends from the targeted company. While the private equity partners enjoyed lucrative payouts, patients suffered from unsanitary conditions, supply shortages, insufficient staffing, and shuttered departments.
Our diagnosis is simple but serious. The harmful behaviors of profit-driven healthcare companies—from tax dodging to insurance denials to carelessness with patient safety—stem from the same illness: a disregard for the community they serve. We must demand more transparency, fairer tax policy, and better oversight of these institutions. That means closing tax loopholes, raising the corporate tax rate, curbing the routine denials of coverage, and strengthening regulatory oversight of health facilities. That’s the only way to ensure that people’s needs are prioritized over corporate profits.
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