@[email protected] @[email protected] 2. @[email protected] recorded a $3.5 billion profit in 2021 and projects an even larger haul, $4.9 billion, in 2022. Kroger itself has fueled the consolidation, acquiring a slew of competing chains, including Harris Teeter and Fred Meyer.

Now, Kroger wants to get MUCH BIGGER

@[email protected] @[email protected] 3. @[email protected] recently announced an agreement to purchase @[email protected], the nation's second-largest grocery store chain, for about $25 billion. Albertsons itself acquired another major competitor, Safeway, in 2015 for $9.2 billion.

https://popular.info/p/buying-the-competition

4. The combined grocery behemoth that would operate nearly 5,000 stores and control 22% of the grocery market in the United States, trailing only Walmart

Kroger-Albertsons and Walmart "would control 70 percent or more of the [grocery] market in 167 cities in the United States."

5. Kroger claims the merger would benefit consumers, pledging to "invest $500 million to lower prices" over four years as part of the transaction.

Sounds good but that's $125 million per year out of $200 billion+ in revenue.

Effectively nothing.

https://popular.info/p/buying-the-competition

6. An influential 2008 study "found that in four of the five mergers they evaluated, [grocery] prices appeared to have increased between 3 and 7 percent."

https://popular.info/p/buying-the-competition

7. Section 7 of the Clayton Antitrust Act, enforced by the FTC, prohibits acquisitions that substantially "lessen competition" in "any line of commerce."

@[email protected] admits the merger will lessen competition in some markets and proposes divesting a few hundred @[email protected] stores

8. These divestiture schemes are used to gain approval for mergers, but seldom work. When @[email protected] bought @[email protected], it divested 168 stores to get regulatory approval.

The company that bought the stores went bankrupt in months, and Albertsons bought back a bunch of stores

9. The private equity firms that own most of @[email protected] are also trying to get a $4 billion "special dividend" from the company prior to the merger.

It would make it extremely difficult for @[email protected] to continue to operate independently

https://popular.info/p/buying-the-competition