Mergers & Acquisitions

New York  -- The outlook for retail in the Northeast remains quite positive, with demand from national, local and franchise companies across a broad range of categories, according to Levin Management.

Men's Wearhouse has named Scott Norris as Men's Wearhouse brand and Moores brand president and Paul Fitzpatrick as Jos. A. Bank's brand president. Additionally, it has appointed Jim Thorne EVP of direct sourcing. All three will report to Mary Beth Blake, the company's president and chief merchandising officer.

Deerfield, Ill. – Walgreen Co. met Wall Street expectations for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014 despite swinging to a loss. Walgreens posted a net loss of $239 million, largely driven by an accounting charge from its Alliance-Boots acquisition, compared to net earnings of $657 million in the same period a year earlier.

Walgreens recorded a non-cash loss of $866 million in the quarter that ended Aug. 31 because it decided to exercise early its option to buy the remaining stake of Alliance-Boots that it did not already own.

Walgreens posted fourth-quarter sales of $19.1 billion, representing an increase of 6.2% compared to the year-ago period, while sales for the fiscal 2014 ended Aug. 31 increased 5.8% to a record $76.4 billion.
 

Hibbett Sports has promoted Jared Briskin to SVP and chief merchant. Briskin replaces Rebecca Jones, who left the company this week.

San Jose, Calif. – eBay Inc. is reversing course on its previous decision to keep its fast-growing online payments business PayPal as part of the company, and is instead spinning the unit off as a separate publicly traded company. The decision will generate $180 million for activist investor Carl Icahn, who attempted to force eBay to spin off PayPal in a public dispute earlier this year. It comes as the payments sector is heating up and generating increased interest as Apple gets set to launch its Apple Pay mobile payments service.

Johnson & Johnson has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Alios BioPharma, a privately held clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing therapies for viral diseases, for approximately $1.8 billion in cash.

The acquisition will include Alios BioPharma's portfolio of potential therapeutics for viral infections including compound AL-8176, an orally administered antiviral therapy currently in Phase 2 studies for the treatment of infants with respiratory syncytial virus.
 

It’s official. Following a strategic review of the company’s growth strategies and structure, the eBay board has approved a plan to separate the company’s eBay and PayPal businesses into independent publicly traded companies in 2015, subject to customary conditions.