Weston family's Wittington Investments agrees $8.9B Boots purchase from Sycamore

The Weston family's Wittington Investments agreed on Oct. 7 to acquire Boots and its 1,800 U.K. and Ireland stores from Sycamore Partners and the Pessina family for $8.9 billion, including debt. Fairfax Financial Holdings is a partner on the transaction, with Wittington holding operational control. The family already owns Shoppers Drug Mart, which the report describes as Canada's largest pharmacy chain.

Bezos Expeditions, the family office of Jeff Bezos, co-led a $475 million Series B in Oratomic, a Pasadena, Calif., quantum computing company built on Caltech research. ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures and General Catalyst were also part of the lead group. The Oct. 8 round values Oratomic at $5.4 billion and brings total funding to $775 million since the company's March launch. Oratomic is targeting a fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2030.

DFO Public Investments, a Delaware fund tied to Michael Dell's family office, agreed on Oct. 14 to buy 972,493 shares of SK Inc. from SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won. The stake is about 1.34% of the South Korean holding company; the price was 544 billion won, or roughly $406 million, according to a regulatory filing. The sale is part of a larger share disposal Chey disclosed earlier this month to help fund his divorce settlement, the report says, citing Finimize.

It is also DFO's second disclosed transaction in nine days: our reporting has DFO Management agreeing on Oct. 6 to co-buy The Baldwin Group at $32.50 a share, and the SK filing followed on Oct. 14.

Premji Invest, the family office of Wipro founder Azim Premji, joined a $30 million seed round in Catalyst, a startup building AI agents that turn plain-language instructions into trading strategies. Sequoia Capital led the Oct. 8 round, with Jump Trading, Peak XV, Lux Capital, AntiFund and Coinbase also participating. Catalyst plans to extend the product to retail investors.

Separately, the family of Nathan "Natie" Kirsh is building its New York family office, KFO, into an institutional investor ahead of Sysco's $29.1 billion acquisition of Jetro Restaurant Depot.