More merger news:
Kroger/Albertsons divest deal with C&S called “insufficient remedy”:
https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com ... ent-remedy
Six Dem lawmakers have come out against this deal: Warren (Mass.), Hirono (Hawaii), Sanders (Ver.), Booker (NJ), Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14, The Bronx), and Lee (PA-12, Pittsburgh).
“In their letter to the FTC’s Khan, Warren, Hirono, Sanders, Booker, Ocasio-Cortez and Lee claimed that divestiture arrangements like the Kroger-Albertsons-C&S deal don’t always pan out as expected.
“When massive mergers like this one are proposed, merging parties sometimes offer behavioral or structural remedies to preemptively ‘cure’ their anticompetitive effects. Structural remedies, such as a divestiture of a number of assets, often fail to address harms to competition—in part because companies have an incentive to ensure the failure of spun-off companies and do not mitigate price increases and other negative effects on consumers,” the congressional members said. “Furthermore,” the lawmakers added, “they encourage companies to ‘litigate the fix’ by proposing remedies during ongoing litigation in order to distract a judge’s focus from the original antitrust violations of the merger.”
The letter cited examples of what the senators and representatives deemed as unsuccessful divestiture agreements—for the 2015 Albertsons-Safeway, 2016 Royal Ahold-Delhaize Group and 2013 Hertz-Dollar Thrifty mergers, in which the divesting companies ended up reacquiring locations.”
The Teamsters Union has also opposed this merger, saying the proposed divests to C&S puts jobs at risk:
https://progressivegrocer.com/teamsters ... ns-sale-cs
University of Utah study concludes that Kroger/Albertsons merger would dilute labor power:
https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com ... abor-power
FTC won’t decide on Kroger/Albertsons merger for another month:
https://boisedev.com/news/2023/12/15/kr ... -ftc-2024/
Lina Khan before joining the FTC did an analysis of the Haggen trainwreck.
All of this news could be enough to derail the merger.