This would be an enormous single grocery chain, with revenue in the $1.4T range. They say they need it in order to compete with Bezos and the Waltons. Kroger says that once the merger is complete, they will "invest in lower prices" (
).
| Krogers | Albertsons |
| Dillons | Albertsons |
| Food 4 Less | Carr-Safeway |
| Fred Meyer | Haggen |
| Fry's | Jewel-Osco |
| Harris Teeter | Kings |
| Home Chef | Pavilions |
| King Soopers | Plated |
| Kroger | Randalls |
| The Little Clinic | Safeway Inc |
| Marlano's | Shaw and Star Market |
| QFC | Tom Thumb |
| Ralphs | United Supermarkets |
| Roundy's | Vons |
| Ruler Foods | |
| Smiths | |
| Vitacost | |
When I saw the quote below in a Reuters piece, just the word "synergies" got my back up.
In an interview with Reuters, Kroger Co
(KR.N) CEO Rodney McMullen said the savings provided by
the deal would allow the chains to cut prices for consumers. He cited $500 million of "cost savings from synergies" that the new entity could use to lower prices.
The $25-billion merger of could ultimately lead to lower prices for shoppers, at least according to a plan laid out Friday by Kroger's CEO.
www.reuters.com
When they throw that word "synergies" in, you know it's a desperation move by one of the parties to keep from going bust and somehow it has talked the other into the idea they can both make a buck by merging.
They'll just get rid of redundancies in their combined operations or store locations, as one might expect, and hope that somehow they can stay above sea level doing it, maybe steal some Walmart customers for awhile with temporary new patterns for special sales if they close out leases on a few warehouses they might not need. Whatever they say about benefit to the consumer, though, that will be a crock inside a couple years.
We are still heading to the one big store that if you can get there, you can buy what they feel like selling if you (and they) have enough money to keep the supply chain optimistic.
I mean you know, what if we wake up some day and ADM has decided it's just a whole lot easier to turn all the corn in the USA into ethanol instead of bothering to roll it out and bake it and crunch it up and stick it in boxes and call it breakfast?
Don't people want something besides cornflakes for breakfast? Let them eat size 17 men's left workboots, gotta lotta those this month over at NewOrder-BigTrade LLC in Arkansas.
Anyway what's it to ADM if someone wants cornflakes ADM doesn't feel like spending dough on to make. This is not breakfast cereal rocket science 101. This is big ag!
/rant - sorry for the pessimism but I'm sick of these everlovin' monopoly moves. Kroger and Albertson have already scoped out what they'll have to spin off to make Biden's DoJ antirust unit happy....
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