US sues to block merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, saying it could push prices higher
US sues to block merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, saying it could push prices higher
Why? The Federal Trade Commission says the $24.6 billion deal would eliminate competition and lead to higher prices for millions of Americans.
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As an Australian who has to deal with the duopoly of our grocery stores after we let them all merge years ago, it absolutely will drive higher prices and nobody who isn't a shareholder should want this.
They basically "collude" to fix and raise prices here and have whole teams of people who's job it is to monitor and extract as much money out of us as possible. They also force growers to accept shitty deals or they reject their produce due to "not meeting their quality standards" and there's basically nowhere else for them to sell it in the quantities they need to.
Nobody wins in grocery store mergers except the shareholders.
In Canada we have multiple chains and they collude anyway
Australia is super concentrated, the duopoly own 70% of the grocery store market as well as others like 60% of the alcohol market. The rest is made up of convenience stores (mostly one company, IGA) and Aldi, the latter having single digit percent.
You basically sell and buy groceries though these two or you don't exist. The CEO of one of them got so cocky during a recent interview he was forced to resign over it.
I guess we are pretty lucky over here in Germany then. We may have had some consolidation in the last few years, but there are still quite a few different grocery store companies competing.
The big ones are Aldi, Lidl, Rewe, Edeka, Netto, Penny and Norma. Quite a few of them own other supermarket chains as well, but those arent in my list.
Our supermarket market is so competitive that even companies like walmart failed to enter it (they also didnt do away with weird US customs, which probably didnt help).
I feel the UK does it fairly well. Every supermarket has its place.
Waitrose for the middle class.
M&S for the people who think they're middle class.
Asda, Morrisons and Tesco for the masses.
Aldi and Lidl for the poor.
Heron Foods for the poor that can't cook.
With the current extreme price gouging, seems like the perfect political cover to anti-trust the hell out of them and break them up.
You'd know the Libs would moan and get the Murdoch media to pump out the propaganda, but I think the Australian public would be on board. The tax cut reversal went over totally fine, because I guess on average people aren't as stupid as the Libs would like.
(For international readers, the Liberal Party are the leaders of the conservative coalition, confusingly.