Lawyers for Washington state will have past grocery chain mergers - and their negative consequences - in mind when they go to court to block a proposed merger between Albertsons and Kroger.
The case is one of three challenging the $24.6 billion deal , which was announced nearly two years ago. The Federal Trade Commission is currently fighting the merger in federal court in Oregon, where closing arguments are expected Tuesday. Colorado has also sued to block the merger.
But if the merger goes through, Washington residents would feel the impact more than the people of any other state. Albertsons and Kroger own more than 300 grocery stores in the state and control more than half of grocery sales there.
Under a plan to ease regulators' concerns , Kroger and Albertsons would sell 579 overlapping stores, 124 of them in Washington, if the merger goes through. That's the highest number among the 19 states with stores on the list. The state attorney general's office says the proposed buyer, C&S Wholesale Grocers, has little experience running stores or pharmacies.
Washington seeks to avoid the situation it found itself in a decade ago, when Albertsons bought the Safeway chain. To satisfy regulators concerned about that deal's potential impact on supermarket competition and consumers, Albertsons sold 146 stores to Haggen, a small grocery chain based in Bellingham, Washington.
