英国卫报:走向失控的博姿药妆(7)（在线收听）

Scott had encountered Pessina once before.

斯科特以前见过佩西纳一次。

The two had met in the summer of 2006 – just after Boots’s merger with Alliance Unichem, but a few months before the buyout.

两人是在2006年夏天相识的——就在博姿与联合医药合并之后，但是是在这次收购的几个月前。

Pessina’s team had taken some of the top officials in Scottish pharmacy to the Balmoral in Edinburgh,

佩西纳的团队带着苏格兰药房的一些高级官员去了爱丁堡的巴尔莫勒尔堡酒店，

a five-star hotel that still stations kilted doormen at the entrance.

这是一家五星级酒店，门口仍有穿着短裙的门卫。

Over what another attendee remembers as a “grand dinner”, the Boots team gathered intelligence about Holyrood’s plans for their industry.

在另一位与会者的回忆中，这是一场“盛大的晚餐”，博茨团队收集了关于霍利鲁德对他们行业计划的情报。

For his part, Scott wanted to know what Pessina had planned for Britain’s most important community pharmacist.

斯科特想知道佩西纳对英国最重要的社区药房有什么计划。

“The question I asked him was: ‘Are you going to stay in the health sector on the stock market?’”

“我问他的问题是：‘你会继续留在股市的医疗行业吗？’”

Each business on the FTSE (where Alliance Boots was then listed) is categorised in a particular sector,

在富时指数(联合博姿当时在富时指数上上市)上，每家公司都被划分在一个特定的行业，

so Barclays can be found under “banks”, BAE Systems under “aerospace” and so on.

因此，巴克莱银行被归入“银行”类，英国航空航天系统公司被归入“航空航天”类，等等。

Behind that innocently technical query lay a much bigger question – “I was asking: ‘Where’s your focus?’”

在这个天真的技术问题背后，隐藏着一个更大的问题——“我在问：‘你的关注点在哪里？’”

Pessina seemed to grasp Scott’s meaning. “He said, ‘Bill, this is a very good question and I understand why you’re asking it.

佩西纳似乎领会了斯科特的意思。“他说，‘比尔，这是一个非常好的问题，我理解你为什么问这个问题。

But as well as pharmacy, there’s a bit of retailing – so we want to be in the retail sector.”

但是除了制药，还有一点零售——所以我们希望公司划分为零售行业。”

It appeared that Pessina saw the future of Boots not as a healthcare business but alongside Marks and Spencer, Next and Carpetright.

佩西纳似乎并没有将博姿视为一家医疗保健企业，而是将其与玛莎百货、耐斯特公司和卡佩特公司放在一起。

“I didn’t see him as someone with a clinical care,” Scott told me.

“我不认为他有考虑临床护理，”斯科特告诉我。

“He’d just seen another market to get into to make money.”

“他只是看到了另一个可以赚钱的市场。”

Whether Bill Scott was right would determine life for Tony and his patients – and millions like them.

比尔·斯科特的判断是否正确，将决定托尼和他的病人——以及数百万和他一样的病人的生活。