LONDON, Oct 27: British health and beauty retailer Boots posted on Thursday a 9.6-per cent fall in pre-tax profits for the first six months of its financial year, but remained confident over the proposed merger with peer Alliance Unichem.

Boots, which announced on October 3 that it was to merge with Alliance Unichem, blamed the profits dip on lower British consumer spending and higher infrastructure costs.

Richard Baker, Boots chief executive, was confident that shareholders would back the merger plans which would create Europe’s leading retail pharmacy business.

Pre-tax profits at Boots stood at 163 million pounds for the six months to September 30, compared with 180m pounds for the same period one year earlier, the group said in a statement. That was just above analysts’ consensus forecasts of between 140 and 160m pounds. —AFP