Sean Aylmer

Indeed, there are, though the news triggered a pretty sharp drop in Sigma's share price.

If the company is successful, it would be the biggest offshore acquisition by an Aussie company since CSL bought Swiss drug maker Vifa for $18.8 billion back in 2022.

Sigma has a market capitalisation of $33 billion and would have to raise obviously billions of dollars in capital to fund an acquisition of that size or it might go and be part of a consortium.

Boots is the dominant player in the UK market with about 40% share.

Pharmacy products, interestingly enough, at Boots is only about a third of its turnover.

In fact, I think it's about 30% where they're doing really well are in GLP-1 drugs, for example, and other kind of healthcare products.

Do you think the Brits would like the advertising of Chemist Warehouse?

The bright yellow, red, somewhat overstated, dare we say.

True.

Now, look, Australian companies pushing overseas haven't always had a good track record.

We mentioned the CSL-FIFA deal.

It's yet to pay full dividends.

It hasn't been a bust by any stretch, but...

It hasn't really paid off either.

Wesfarmers bought a UK home improvement chain called Homebase a few years back, or it's probably almost 10 years back.

That didn't work.

Some non-retail businesses have made a pretty good fist of it.

Packaging company Emcor and insurer QBE have steadily acquired businesses over many, many years.

Harvey Norman, the retailer,

It's done a pretty good job building stores from the ground itself, establishing its own brand in countries including Ireland and Slovenia.