The FTC has been granted a preliminary injunction to prevent Kroger Company from acquiring Albertsons Companies. The FTC had previously challenged the $24.6 billion dollar deal alongside 9 state attorneys general.
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I have both an Albertsons and Kroger in my city (Albertsons close to me and Kroger further, even further than Walmart/Target), I would gladly have the Albertsons converted to a Kroger. Albertsons pricing is absolutely horrible. I drive the extra distance to Walmart since they are 20-30% cheaper than Albertsons, even Target is 10-20% cheaper. Anybody who lives near a Albertsons knows this. Why take a struggling/non-competitive grocer and not allow them to be bought by another grocery who can afford to offer lower prices? All this does is allow Walmart/Amazon/Target to gobble up even more of the market share. And the communities without Walmart/Target are left having to pay the higher prices or have stores closed down in their areas.
The prices with on sale items are very competitive at Albertsons compared with Kroger. And Hot Deli at Kroger is much more expensive than Albertsons in my area.
If your diet and household grocery shopping is entirely determined by what handful of items Albertsons decides to put on sale then you might not notice as much. But even the sale prices at Safeway just bring pricing down similar to Walmart in most cases. I checked right now randomly in the app and Albertsons brand pasta, just regular 1 lb pound box of Albertsons brand pasta, is 100% more expensive at Albertsons than Walmart ($2 vs $1).
The Albertsons-owned supermarket near me is cheaper than the Kroger-owned supermarket near me most of the time.
Not for me, I added same items to cart for both and keep an eye on it and it is almost always cheaper at Kroger. I usually just end up going to Walmart since it is almost always cheaper than both.
true. Safeway is always overpriced.
I’m lucky with several chains within a 10 mile radius but I’ve lived through the Albertsons/Safeway combo that reduced stores and increased prices and the Kroger purchase of Mariano’s that killed it. Even Tony’s Finer Foods sold out to a private equity that has a stake in Albertsons.
Is this a joke? Kroger has a huge percentage of the grocery market. It’s only second to Walmart. Target has less of share when it comes to groceries. They’re not really trying to compete in groceries, so there’s not even much overlap with Kroger and Target. Why are you acting like Kroger is this small company? How are M&As ever a good idea? It always results in less competition, the loss of jobs, etc.
ck
Thank you for proving my point, Kroger is second to Walmart and Walmart has consistently been eating up grocery share in addition to Target and Amazon. I never said Kroger is a small chain, I said it is more competitive pricing than Albertsons. Please go back and read what I said before raging for no reason except those that you made up in your head.
Not the case for me. Albertsons/Safeway are easily the best option for me when utilizing the plethora of deals available in the app, which is leaps and bounds better than the Fry’s (Kroger) app. Being able to redeem Albertsons points for grocery discounts in lieu of fuel discounts only is also a SIGNIFICANT advantage…and the redemption rate goes well above $0.10 off for crappy fuel for every 100 points.
As for WM & Target, I don’t even consider them. They are both far more expensive than Albertsons/Safeway/Fry’s.
If your diet and household grocery shopping is entirely determined by what handful of items Albertsons decides to put on sale then you might not notice as much. But even the sale prices at Safeway just bring pricing down similar to Walmart in most cases. I checked right now randomly in the app and Albertsons brand pasta, just regular 1 lb pound box of Albertsons brand pasta, is 100% more expensive at Albertsons than Walmart ($2 vs $1).
I live in a small town with only a Fred Meyer and a Safeway, the nearest “other” grocery store is a 30 to 60 minute drive away. I dread this merger as I fear the Safeway will be closed and we will be left with only Fred Meyer (Kroger), losing both competition for our dollars and jobs for our community.
After January 20, 2025, so long as these companies (and anyone for that matter, no discrimination) pay their respective ‘gratuities,’ the US Supreme Court should allow them to do whatever they want. This is not to be confused with bribes, which are not practically different, but you just cannot use that exact word. Remember cash is king! Also, Trump is king. Praise our glorious, fearless, perfect leader!!
Yes, but what will that be, given that a day after this was announced, Albertsons called off the merger and sued Kroger?
The judge cited that places like Amazon/Wal-Mart aren’t “competitors”. I guess since she’s a left coast judge she’s turning a blind eye to Wal-Mart being the big grocery seller in most of the south, and other parts of the country other than the left coast where real estate availability was more of an issue for their growth. Amazon also has a much larger grocery presence in recent years.
“Competition” isn’t a simple thing. Just because there’s competition in one area doesn’t prove that it’s an overall competition. There are business and legal definitions of competition that differ from what most people think, just like many people think that “inflation” is over many years when it’s officially only year-to-year.
I live in the Seattle area. Amazon fresh is pretty sparse with locations, most everyday people shop at Safeway (Albertsons), Fred Meyers (Kroger), or QFC (Kroger).
Exactly. A combined Kroger/Albertsons would have had a virtual monopoly in the Puget Sound aside from some very small, specialty grocers like PCC and Met Market that are not full-fledged grocery stores. Otherwise your choices are Safeway, Albertsons, or Kroger-owned QFC and Fred Meyer.
Walmart is a non-player here, largely due to Fred Meyer’s superstore format.
For some context, the closest grocery stores by distance from my house – Safeway, QFC (Kroger), Albertsons, Safeway, Fred Meyer (Kroger), Whole Foods, Safeway, QFC, QFC. It would have been a virtual monopoly. The only saving grace was maybe getting Kroger Pay at Safeway for 3x on CSP.
Walmart only competes with these stores in certain areas – there are many where it’s not much of a factor. Also, the last time one of these companies tried to spin-off assets after a merger (when Albertsons bought Safeway and sold stores to Haggen), it was a complete disaster. In this case, there are even more stores that would be spun-off and C&S doesn’t have a good track record in the retail sphere.
What happened to make it a “disaster”?
That’s a joke that she doesn’t consider Walmart a competitor of Albertsons. She must have never been to 1. Every time that I go, it’s packed with people shopping for groceries!
Walmart certainly isn’t a competitor in my city. They opened a store in my neighborhood around 8 years ago. I occasionally went there to buy a small number of products I couldn’t find at the more traditional supermarkets nearby, but I always viewed it primarily as a retailer for clothes, toiletries, medicines, cheap electronics, and a narrow range of prepackaged foods. They had a produce section but I never saw anyone actually buy anything from it. The Walmart closed about 4 or 5 years after it opened. From what I saw in the local press and online, no one much cared about the closure.
Boooooo
Grocery mergers are bad, actually.
You must hate Unions (just like Amazon and Walmart). Also, the entire point of the merger was to have greater pricing power over suppliers so Kroger could reduce prices in order to remain competitive with Walmart…
Who was talking about unions? Since you’re for this merger, you must love people losing jobs. Mergers always end with layoffs, because there’s obviously going to be redundant positions.
I think it’s funny that you actually believe Kroger. Of course, any company trying to get a merger approved will talk about how great it’s going to be. Please provide an example of a merger that ended up being good for consumers.
Jeff
Interesting take. Either you’re an Albertsons shareholder, or you like paying more for groceries.
Here in Chicago these two keep the prices down because they are the two biggest competitors. A merger would eliminate that.
In the north East, Albertsons stores are expensive. Way more than Kroger.
OP doesn’t understand that competition is better for consumers.
Or he’s just a troll..or both
They were going to divest Mariano’s if merger was approved because of this
or he has a ton in Capital One Shopping rewards he wants to redeem
There’s a 3rd option. He likes when others suffer by paying a higher amount more than he hates paying more himself.
Stop politicizing everything jfc. And also I take it you like mono/oligopolies
There is nothing politicized here. If it was a Trump judge, the merger would have been allowed and if it was a Biden judge (which it was), the merger got stopped. That is just the way (sadly) our court system is these days.
Nowhere did I say whether I agreed or disagreed with the judges decision.
So you mean to say the judge is a statist hack?
Then that was a good thing. Your grocery prices are not going up this year.
I think they already did.
Then you’re up for a big surprise next year.
I wonder if the same will occur with the discover & capital one merger🤔
I really hope so. I hate Capital One. They ruin everything they buy. I don’t want to close my discover card and checking.
I miss ING Direct
Why would you close your Discover accounts if the merger were to go through?
I wouldn’t want to but as history as proof, every product I had before Capital One bought ended up being closed due to them making that useless.
That’s interesting as I wasn’t aware of that. Do you have some examples of useful accounts that CO acquired and then nuked?
Oh then read my story. First there was a great local bank in DMV area called Chevy Chase Bank. Small and local with great customer service. Capital one bought and buried that name in ground and so did all the good things about that bank.
ING direct was a great online bank. I had checking with debit card that gave cashback, savings account with good interest, CDs with good interest, IRAs with again good rates and Sharebuilder to buy shares. I had all. Capital one bought them. Sold Sharebuilder to Etrade, so I sold all my stocks. then stopped offering IRAs and sold to someone else, I transferred them out. Checking was useless. The best part of the story is the savings. I still had some money on the savings when I noticed one day the interest in the savings was like 0.3% or 0.6% something like that when HYSA rates were like 4%. So, it turns out, all those old savings account got downgraded to low APR savings while they offered another HYSA savings account with better rates. I didn’t have a lot on savings but not sure how long they had been ripping me off with lower interest. Closed out last of my savings account with them. Had my wife close out her credit card with them too, which was her oldest one. Just to never see them again.
So here I am finally free from them and they try to ruin Discover for me. I have checking, savings and credit card with discover and mark my words, they will ruin it all. If it happens, checking will no longer have cashback, they will ruin savings like before and credit card will be crap, beginning with offshore customer service.
Yep, been my experience with C1 as well. They will ruin Discover if it goes through.
I used to have an ING Direct account also. That eventually turned into a CO account, like you said. However, I failed to close it for many years, missing out on 1 or 2 CO bonuses.
I learned my lesson and now close my CO accounts the same calendar year that I receive the bonus so I can churn their accounts faster.
Instead of being mad at CO, learn to take advantage of their great deals. 😉
Discover hasn’t really put any effort in to doing anything attention grabbing for quite some time now. The checking/savings was a good way to get people more invested overall but those aren’t high profit products and often lose money.