英国卫报:走向失控的博姿药妆(21)

Five years after taking Alliance Boots private, Pessina and KKR began selling the firm to America’s biggest pharmacy¹ chain,

在将联合博姿私有化五年后，佩西纳和KKR开始将公司出售给美国最大的医药连锁企业，

Walgreens – a process that was completed at the end of 2014.

沃尔格林连锁药店——该项目于2014年底完成。

The turnaround that Pessina promised never materialised: Colin Haslam from Queen Mary University points out that by 2014,

佩西纳承诺的转机从未实现：玛丽皇后大学的科林·哈斯拉姆指出，到2014年，

operating profit margins² for Boots UK – a key way of working out how much it actually makes on each pound going through its tills – were stuck at around the levels of 15 years earlier.

英国博姿的营业利润率一直停留在15年前的水平左右。这是计算该公司每英镑经过分肥后实际赚了多少钱的关键方法。

Meanwhile, the model of stretch and extract – loading Boots with debt,

同时，建立了消耗和提取模型，使博姿负债，

then pulling out as much as possible for investors³ without reinvesting in the business – “has left its underlying⁴ financial structure hollowed out”.

然后在不对业务进行再投资的情况下，为投资者尽可能多地撤出——“已使其潜在的财务结构空洞化”。

Asked about this, Boots replied that it had put money into both the employee pension funds and its chain of stores.

当被问及此事时，博姿回答说，该公司已经向员工养老基金和连锁店投入了资金。

Haslam points out that all firms are required to meet their pension-fund obligations.

哈斯拉姆指出，所有公司都被要求履行其养老基金义务。

But there have been some big winners from Boots.

但博姿也有一些大赢家。

By 2012, Pessina was already claiming to have tripled the value of KKR’s investment in the company.

到2012年，佩西纳已经宣称，KKR对该公司的投资已经增加了两倍。

He himself has not done too shabbily, either.

他自己做得也不太卑鄙。

In 2006, the year he merged⁵ his wholesale⁶ business with Boots, Forbes magazine ranked Pessina as the 428th richest man in the world.

2006年，也就是他将批发业务与博姿合并的那一年，《福布斯》杂志将他列为全球第428位富豪。

By 2015, he had shot up to 99th place. He has also gained a notably⁷ high vantage point in British public life.

到2015年，他的排名上升到了99位。他在英国的公共生活中也获得了显著的有利地位。

In 2010, David Cameron and George Osborne – both of whom describe tax avoidance as “morally repugnant” – took Pessina as part of their entourage to China.

2010年，戴维·卡梅伦和乔治·奥斯本——两人都称避税“在道义上令人反感”——把佩西纳作为访华的随行人员之一。

In the run-up to the general election of 2015, Pessina claimed that a Labour government under Ed Miliband would be a “catastrophe”.

在2015年大选的准备阶段，佩希纳曾声称，由埃德·米利班德领导的工党政府将是一场“灾难”。

This warning from a Monaco citizen, who once said he would never buy a home in Britain “because if I have a home here I have to run it”,

这是一位摩纳哥公民的警告，被《星期日电讯报》认为是严重的，足以作为当天的主要新闻之一。

was considered grave enough by the Sunday Telegraph to be treated as one of its major stories of the day.

他曾说他永远不会在英国买房，“因为如果我在这里有房子，我就得经营它”。

1 pharmacy   

n.药房，药剂学，制药业，配药业，一批备用药品

参考例句：

• She works at the pharmacy.她在药房工作。
• Modern pharmacy has solved the problem of sleeplessness.现代制药学已经解决了失眠问题。

2 margins   

边( margin的名词复数 )； 利润； 页边空白； 差数

参考例句：

• They have always had to make do with relatively small profit margins. 他们不得不经常设法应付较少的利润额。
• To create more space between the navigation items, add left and right margins to the links. 在每个项目间留更多的空隙，加左或者右的margins来定义链接。

3 investors   

n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
• a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会

4 underlying   

adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的

参考例句：

• The underlying theme of the novel is very serious.小说隐含的主题是十分严肃的。
• This word has its underlying meaning.这个单词有它潜在的含义。

5 merged   

（使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中

参考例句：

• Turf wars are inevitable when two departments are merged. 两个部门合并时总免不了争争权限。
• The small shops were merged into a large market. 那些小商店合并成为一个大商场。

6 wholesale   

n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售

参考例句：

• The retail dealer buys at wholesale and sells at retail.零售商批发购进货物，以零售价卖出。
• Such shoes usually wholesale for much less.这种鞋批发出售通常要便宜得多。

7 notably   

adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地

参考例句：

• Many students were absent,notably the monitor.许多学生缺席，特别是连班长也没来。
• A notably short,silver-haired man,he plays basketball with his staff several times a week.他个子明显较为矮小，一头银发，每周都会和他的员工一起打几次篮球。