Welcome in, today is Tuesday, October sixth, and we begin with a Wall Street Journal report that L'Oréal has brought in restructuring advisers over its US talc liabilities. L'Oréal has engaged restructuring advisers over rising US legal liabilities tied to talc and other chemical ingredients in some of its cosmetic products, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. Per that account, the company's US unit is working with counsel Weil Gotshal and Manges and investment bank Ducera Partners on suits from individuals alleging talc products caused illness. The same reporting says L'Oréal is weighing moving tort liabilities into a separate corporate entity and selling them to an outside investor, an option outside Chapter Eleven modeled on Honeywell's divestiture of certain asbestos liabilities last year. L'Oréal's own half-year report put about seven hundred sixty US proceedings pending at the end of June, up from about six hundred twenty at the end of last year, and said it strongly contests the claims. Whether that exposure can be cleanly separated is unconfirmed, and the answer reads through to every company carrying similar liabilities. Investor-leaning reaction skews cautious, with some framing the advisory mandate as added valuation risk. Also today, Sycamore Partners is nearing a deal to sell the UK pharmacy and beauty retailer Boots to the Canadian arm of the Weston family for close to nine billion dollars including debt, Global Cosmetics News reports. That account says a transaction could complete within weeks, though negotiations could still fall through, and Cosmetics Business describes the talks as rumoured. Per the same reporting, Sycamore acquired Walgreens last year for twenty-four billion dollars including debt, then split the business into five units to ease disposals of non-core operations, Boots among them. The Weston family's Canadian holdings include the grocer Loblaw and the pharmacy chain Shoppers Drug Mart. Ownership carries assortment and own-brand decisions at one of the UK's largest beauty doorways. Industry reaction looks past the price to the day after completion, with a recurring view that the store estate needs real capital. Separately, a hard number on how difficult acquired indie makeup brands are to scale. Fortune argues the one-point-two-billion-dollar plan to build a global beauty platform has narrowed to reviving one struggling brand. The piece traces Waldencast, the SPAC launched by former L'Oréal executive Michel Brousset and Hind Sebti, from its twenty twenty-one combination with Obagi Medical and Milk Makeup through June's agreement to sell Obagi to Bridgepoint for up to four hundred sixty million dollars, against the eight hundred fifty-eight million enterprise value Waldencast had placed on that business. That read notes three senior executives left alongside Obagi, leaving Milk Makeup as the whole company. Milk's net revenue fell fifty-seven percent in the first half to twenty-six point one million dollars, and Waldencast took a fifty-two point three million dollar goodwill write-down, then filed to delist from Nasdaq. e.l.f. Brands is entering fragrance and body care with an own-brand line called e.l.f. POP, Cosmetics Business reports. Per that reporting, the collection is built on what the company describes as sensorial holiday destinations, and it debuts with Tromsø, a limited-edition spicy gourmand collection for autumn and winter inspired by the Northern Lights in Tromsø, Norway. The line extends a mass-price portfolio already spanning e.l.f. Cosmetics, e.l.f. Skin and e.l.f. Hair into two adjacent categories. That same account places the move directly after the company's limited-edition fragrance collaboration with H and M this year, and quotes chief marketing officer Oshiya Savur saying fragrance is the fastest-growing beauty category globally. Reaction leans toward reading this as a category entry built on an experiential scent story rather than another SKU add. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. L'Oréal-owned Korean skincare brand Dr.G has launched on TikTok Shop in the US, Personal Care Insights reports, putting social commerce ahead of any wider brick-and-mortar rollout. Mint argues L'Oréal is resetting its India playbook with prestige launches and acquisitions of homegrown brands, following our earlier report on its Innovist clearance, as venture-backed challengers take the growth. French formulator and packager Anjac Health and Beauty is launching a platform dedicated to supporting people on GLP-1 treatments, Premium Beauty News reports. Coty has named Kara Langan general manager of Consumer Beauty US, joining this month to oversee commercial strategy and brand performance, per Cosmetics Business. And finally, Premium Beauty News reports investment firm Borletti has acquired the Italian perfumery chain Pinalli from H.I.G. Capital. Financial terms were not disclosed.