Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday sued to block the proposed merger of Kroger and Albertsons, two of the nation’s largest grocery chains.
In the suit filed in King County Superior Court, Ferguson argued that the $25-billion deal would harm consumers and raise prices, The Seattle Times reported. Kroger and Albertsons have more than 300 locations in the state and account for more than half of its grocery sales, according to the suit.
“This merger is bad for Washington shoppers and workers,” Ferguson said in a news release Monday. “Shoppers will have fewer choices and less competition, and, without a competitive marketplace, they will pay higher prices at the grocery store.”
Weird. I thought kroger had bought out albertson’s years ago. At least 15 years or so ago, all the albertson’s stores (like 10 that I knew of) became krogers in my area.
The biggest move with Albertson’s in the last while (maybe a little less than 10 years ago) was buying Safeway. Maybe you’re thinking of that, and/or maybe they closed some stores and Kroger came in instead? Here in Denver they’re looking at selling some stores to the company that owns Piggly Wiggly to make regulators happy - could be that something like that was done.
As part of the Albertsons-Safeway merger a number of locations were required to be sold, and often they were sold to another grocery chain.
I’m sure they either sold those specific stores to Kroger, or closed and Kroger bought the building like you said, but I just haven’t seen an Albertson’s in decades here. I really thought they had went under.
I think it’s pretty regionalized. Here in Denver, the few Albertsons I know of were turned into Safeway after the merger. But I went to an Albertsons in New Mexico just a few months ago
Fuck, North of Seattle off, iirc, 238th and 99, there was an Albertsons and a Safeway kiddie corner to each other, and some brilliant person decided what was best for each store was to switch locations, with each other. These are the big brains here, people, better look out!
I hope whomever initiated that set in motion an unstoppable Rube Goldman chain of events on his way out after telling the board of executives to fuck themselves off a cliff, and if they’re not the case, then I hope they physically join the rest at the bottom of our metaphorical cliff