Steve Burd retires

[klkla]

Safeway CEO Steve Burd is finally retiring after 20 years.
http://www.progressivegrocer.com/top-st ... to-retire/

IMO it's about time. Although he's done some innovative things at Safeway he's also made huge billion dollar mistakes (Dominick's, Randalls/Tom Thumb, Genuardi's) that would have cost a lot of other CEo's their job and should have caused him his. The BOD should have canned him years ago.

[storewanderer]

I don't know if it was him or those below him who pushed the centralization so much on the acquired banners and far flung non-western regions. We know Burd was big on cutting costs but I wonder who directed the specific actions that caused the odd standardization that has taken place across the banners. Blackhawk might turn out to be a very good thing. We can revisit that in a couple years.

[klkla]

Blackhawk, lifestyle-format, improvements in customer service. Those can't be taken away from him.

But he was never held accountable by the board for the billions of dollars lost in the Randall's/Tom Thumb, Dominick's, and Genuardi's acquisitions. And yes, as CEO he would have been 100% responsible for these moves. The decision to make tehse acquisitions would not have been pushed down to a lower level executive.

[storewanderer]

I don't think the acquisitions were bad ideas. It was how they went about integrating and operating what they acquired. And I'd probably add Vons to the list of questionable acquisitions too because even though Vons looks to be a good performer, I think had Vons been left on its own, it would probably still be over the 300 store mark, still have multiple defined formats, and probably be in a better competitive position today. And maybe Vons would have done what was needed to have a good presence in places like Las Vegas and Fresno.

[klkla]

The acquisitions were horrible ideas. $4 billion spent on the Domicks and Randall's/Tom Thumb deals not including the cumulative losses they have generated since. They almost had a deal to unload Dominicks for $283 million (they paid $1.8 billlion just a few years earlier) and couldn't make it happen. They've never received a serious offer for the Texas stores.

The Vons deal would have to be considered a success. Safeway was given a 30% ownership interest in Vons after they bought they bought the Southern California stores. In the years after Vons did a great job of growing sales and developing good formats... but they could never put it on the bottom line. Safeway finally grew frustrated waiting for Vons to make an acceptable profit and was able to buy the remaining 70% of their stock for a pretty cheap price and have had a huge return on investment. Vons may have lost market share since Safeway took over but they're been much more profitable.

[steps]

THANK GOD! Steve Burd ruined all the store banners. Hopefully the new CEO will see every banner in every state CANNOT operate like a Safeway in NorCal.