Business
Column: Good riddance to the merger of grocers Albertsons and Kroger, which would have cost you money
The inside stories of messy marriage breakups have been an entertainment staple since even before Tolstoy observed that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So let’s thank the supermarket giants Kroger and Albertsons, whose $24.6-billion merger has collapsed amid mutual recriminations, for their outstanding contribution to the genre.
The proximate cause of the breakup was the granting of a preliminary injunction against the deal by U.S. Judge Adrienne Nelson of Oregon. Nelson’s ruling, issued Tuesday, was a response to a motion by the Federal Trade Commission, the District of Columbia and eight states including California. (A state judge in Washington also ruled against the merger the same day.)
Although the two companies had fought the challenges to the merger seemingly hand in hand, their accord dissolved within 24 hours of Nelson’s ruling. Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons sued Kroger on Wednesday, citing the latter’s alleged “failure to exercise ‘best efforts’ and to take ‘any and all actions’ to secure regulatory approval” of the deal.
The overarching goals of antitrust law are not met by permitting an otherwise unlawful merger in order to permit firms to compete with an industry giant.
— Federal Judge Adrienne Nelson, blocking the Kroger/Albertsons merger
Kroger called Albertsons’ claims “baseless” and cited its would-be spouse’s “repeated intentional material breaches and interference throughout the merger process, which we will prove in court.”
Those of us who have followed the deal from its inception in 2022 can add this: “Good riddance.”
The collapse of the supermarket merger may stand as the final antitrust success of the Biden-era FTC, which has taken a hard line toward industry consolidations under Chair Lina Khan. Donald Trump is planning to nominate Andrew Ferguson, an FTC commissioner and conservative lawyer, as the agency’s chairman. Khan will be stepping down.
The two grocery chains maintained that they needed to merge in order to successfully compete with megastore chains such as Walmart and Costco, which have grown their grocery operations to the point that their sales approach those of Albertsons and Kroger or even exceed them.
The truth is, however, that the squalid nature of this transaction was always self-evident. As I wrote after the original announcement, the merger partners pitched it to the public as a boon to consumers. Merger partners always say this, but the consumer savings and service improvements generally prove elusive.
“We will take the learnings from each company to bring greater value and a better experience to more customers, more associates and more communities,” Kroger Chief Executive Rodney McMullen said then.
McMullen didn’t explicitly say that the deal would mean lower prices, but it would be a rare shopper who didn’t think that “greater value and a better experience” meant anything other than paying less at the checkout counter. Economists and antitrust experts predicted that the creation of a monopolistic supermarket giant would almost surely add inflationary pressure to food prices.
At the heart of the merger, as I further reported, was a $4-billion dividend to be paid to Albertsons stockholders. Six of the largest stockholders were corporate insiders, defined as holders of more than 5% of Albertsons shares each.
The biggest shareholder was the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, which owns more than 26% of the shares and has four nominees on the company’s board of directors. The other five are investment and real estate funds that hold a total of an additional three board seats.
The six investors control about 75% of Albertsons shares. In other words, they voted themselves a multibillion-dollar handout.
Albertsons had claimed that the dividend wasn’t connected to the merger but was “part of Albertsons’ long-term strategy for growth,” which was “determined well before Albertsons’ discussions with Kroger began.”
Yet the companies’ own merger announcement had stated explicitly that the $4-billion dividend was “part of the transaction.” They counted the dividend as part of the merger price, accounting for $6.85 per share of the $34.10 per share payable to Albertsons shareholders. The dividend was approved by the Albertsons board at the very same meeting at which it approved the merger deal itself.
It should go without saying that funneling $4 billion to insiders off the top wasn’t going to make it any easier to bring consumers lower prices at the checkout counter.
Then there was the issue of Albertsons’ corporate conduct. In October, Albertsons reached a $3.9-million settlement with the attorneys general of Los Angeles County and six other California counties as well as the FTC over accusations that the chain ripped off customers at hundreds of its Vons, Safeway and Albertsons stores in California. The company didn’t admit to liability in settling the case, but the terms of the final judgment suggest that the counties and the FTC had the goods — or at least had enough evidence that Albertsons thought it wise to make the case go away.
Albertsons says it has now implemented policies and employee training to ensure that its prices are accurate.
The principal issues raised by the FTC and the states concerned the prospects that the merger of America’s two biggest supermarket chains would allow them to dominate their markets as a monopoly or near-monopoly. That pointed to higher prices for customers and lower wages for workers, which are legitimate concerns for antitrust regulators.
Kroger, the largest chain, operates about 2,700 stores in 35 states and the District of Columbia, under brand names including Ralphs. Albertsons’ footprint encompasses about 2,300 stores under names such as Vons, Pavilions and Safeway. As Judge Nelson observed, the two chains have assiduously competed with each other for years, tracking each other’s prices in an effort to seize market share.
To meet the FTC’s objections, the merger partners proposed selling 579 stores to C&S Wholesale Grocers, a privately held supermarket supplier headquartered in New Hampshire that is a tiny fraction of the merger partners’ size — among other metrics, it has about 14,000 employees, compared with 430,000 employees at Kroger and 285,000 at Albertsons. The sale price was to be $2.9 billion.
Such divestitures are common features of merger deals that face regulatory challenge. But they don’t always meet their goal of preserving competition. A good example is the outcome of a divestiture scheme the FTC ordered in 2014, to mitigate the anticompetitive effects of Albertsons’ takeover of Safeway.
The FTC ordered the divestiture of 168 stores. More than 140 were acquired by Haggen Holdings, an 18-store chain in the Pacific Northwest. As it happened, Haggen was utterly ill-equipped to grow nearly tenfold overnight. Within months it was laying off workers, and before the year was out it had filed for bankruptcy.
Haggen put 100 of the stores back on the block, and 54 of them were reacquired by Albertsons as part of a deal to purchase Haggen outright. Even with the repurchases, the merger resulted in the elimination all competition in some communities.
That history gave Nelson pause when she assessed the new divestiture plan. C&S, she noted, didn’t have very happy experiences when it “dipped its toes into the grocery retail industry before.” The wholesaler bought 220 retail stores between 2001 and 2003, but had sold 190 of them by 2005. The company operates about 25 retail stores under the Piggly Wiggly and Grand Union brands; unlike Kroger and Albertsons, which incorporate pharmacies and gasoline stations into many of their locations, C&S operates only one pharmacy and no gas stations.
In short, Nelson observed, “there are serious concerns about C&S’ ability to run a large-scale retail grocery business that can successfully compete” with a merged Albertsons/Kroger. Among other issues, she wrote, C&S would have to re-brand about half the stores, a process that is “effectively the same as opening a new, unfamiliar grocery store in the eyes of consumers.” C&S didn’t respond to my request for a comment on Nelson’s take, though a spokeswoman told me by email that the firm is still committed to a “transformation strategy, which includes expansion into retail.”
As for the merger partners’ assertion that their deal was a defensive move against competitors such as Walmart and Costco, Nelson was unmoved. “The overarching goals of antitrust law are not met,” she wrote, “by permitting an otherwise unlawful merger in order to permit firms to compete with an industry giant.”
With the merger dead, the squabbling between the former partners is just beginning. Under their original deal, Albertsons is entitled to a $600-million breakup fee. But it says it will be seeking billions of dollars in costs, due in part to “the extended period of unnecessary limbo Albertsons endured as a result of Kroger’s actions.” Among other things, Albertsons’ asserted that Kroger dithered on divestiture deals that might have met the FTC’s objections.
In response, Kroger said it “went to extraordinary lengths to uphold the merger agreement throughout the entirety of the regulatory process and the facts will make that abundantly clear.”
Residents of Monterey Park voted overwhelmingly to ban data centers on election day, making the San Gabriel Valley city the first in the nation to do so by public vote.
As of Wednesday, 86% of votes were in favor of Measure NDC, the city ban, according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk.
Other cities and towns have passed moratoriums on data centers, as a wave of opposition sweeps the country. But the Monterey Park vote can only be overturned by another ballot measure, making it the most permanent data center ban in a jurisdiction.
Monterey Park’s City Council had already banned data centers by ordinance, after a proposed 247,000-square-foot data center met an outpouring of public anger and concern. The developer withdrew that plan.
That facility would have been less than 500 feet away from the nearest home, and would have used three times the electricity of the entire 60,000-person city. Residents said it would have caused noise and air pollution and driven up electricity rates.
“This ensures long-lasting protections for current and future generations,” Amy Wong, co-founder of the group San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action, said of the vote. “It means that future city councils cannot overturn a data center ban, even if data center developers wanted to spend money to fund pro-data center candidates.”
The measure had no formal opposition. The developer of the proposed facility, investment firm HMC StratCap, said it wouldn’t engage in the ballot fight when it withdrew in March.
The Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, expressed disappointment in the vote.
“It sends a signal that the area is closed for business, both for data centers and for other significant economic development projects,” state policy director Khara Boender said.
“It deprives local residents of the opportunity to compete for jobs and investment, while also causing the area to relinquish substantial long-term economic investment, high-wage jobs, and critical tax revenue to neighboring areas or other states.”
SGV Progressive Action worked with hyperlocal groups including No Data Center Monterey Park to rally support for the measure.
The group is now focused on stopping data center proposals in the City of Industry and fighting a move by City of Industry, Santa Fe Springs, Vernon and City of Commerce to welcome data centers and other industry with fast-tracked permitting and tax incentives.
City of Industry, in the San Gabriel Valley, and Vernon, south of downtown L.A., are primarily industrial areas, each with around 300 permanent residents. They are employment centers, and tens of thousands of workers commute in daily.
There has been little vocal opposition to data centers among the few residents of these cities. Wong said the protest is primarily coming from the surrounding neighborhoods.
“If a data center gets built in City of Industry, residents across the region would bear the brunt of pollution and increased utility costs,” Wong said, noting that it is surrounded by 16 other cities and unincorporated communities.
Data center proposals have been limited in California compared to Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois and Arizona, which sit at the center of a recent boom in hyperscaler facilities to power artificial intelligence.
California has the third-most data centers in the country, with 300, but high electricity rates, expensive land and regulatory hurdles mean that fewer, and smaller, facilities are currently planned than in other hotspots.
That doesn’t mean opposition hasn’t been fierce. In Coachella and Imperial County, residents are showing up in droves to protest local proposals.
In the San Gabriel Valley, Montebello, El Monte and Baldwin Park have all enacted temporary moratoriums, and Alhambra recently banned data centers as part of a zoning code update.
Wong said she hoped the ballot measure vote would galvanize the opposition. “The vote is a testament to the people power of our region,” she said. “Our region is worth protecting, and we won’t let data centers determine our future.”
A rule intended to prevent rent gouging in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires has lapsed in Los Angeles County, possibly exposing some renters to hikes.
The executive order that blocked rent increases was issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom amid the devastating wildfires last year. Under the order, landlords couldn’t increase rents by more than 10% above their prefire levels.
The rule, which was supposed to be temporary and was repeatedly extended, ended Friday after a vote to extend it again failed to garner enough votes. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes Pacific Palisades, sounded the alarm in a motion to extend price protections that failed to pass at the Board of Supervisors’ May 19 meeting.
“These price gouging protections continue to be necessary as construction and rebuilding continue, and as thousands of people remain displaced,” the motion said. “Families which signed short-term leases could face drastic price increases of 50% or more without further price gouging protection.”
Los Angeles County is home to more than 1 million rental properties, though not all of them needed protection from the new rule. There are already stricter rent increase caps for many residences, depending on the location, type and age of the building. Despite the rent control in the region, the people of Los Angeles pay among the highest rents in the country.
It is uncertain whether renters will face rapidly rising rents now that the protection has lapsed. But some real estate experts and policymakers said there was no need for the temporary rule that was part of the governor’s state of emergency.
Supervisors Kathryn Barger, Janice Hahn and Holly Mitchell abstained from voting on the motion to extend the protection, while Supervisors Hilda Solis and Horvath supported it.
“I abstained because I did not see sufficient evidence to justify extending this emergency ordinance, nor did I see evidence to eliminate it entirely,” Hahn said.
Barger’s office said she supported allowing the protections to sunset while waiting to see whether new information emerged.
“Market data already shows countywide rents are only about 2% above pre-emergency levels and rental inventory has grown,” Barger representative Helen E. Chavez Garcia said. “The Supervisor is also mindful of the burden these ongoing protections place on small property owners throughout the county.”
Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There haven’t been steep rent hikes in neighborhoods within three miles of the Palisades fire, according to a Times analysis of data from Zillow, the property listing company.
In ZIP Codes within three miles of the Palisades fire, rent increased 4.8% from December 2024 to April 2025. In areas around the Eaton fire, which destroyed swaths of Altadena, rent jumped 5.2% in the same period.
In L.A. County, ZIP Codes farther from the fires saw only about a 2% increase.
A landlords representative, Jesus Rojas of the Apartment Owners Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, told the supervisors during public comment at the meeting that the county’s rent-gouging rules have “long outlived the emergency they were intended to address” and are now being “wrongfully used to harm thousands of rental housing providers throughout the county.”
“There is no proof that multifamily rental housing providers are hugely increasing rents for impacted homeowners,” Rojas said.
Indeed, there are strong signs that the property market in the Los Angeles area has at last begun to cool.
L.A. metro-area rent prices recently fell to a four-year low, with the median rent slipping to $2,167 in December.
Meanwhile, condominium sales had their slowest start of the year in decades. Condo sales in Los Angeles have plummeted to a 20-year low, with fewer than 2,000 units sold in January and February — the worst start to the year since 2005.
Newsom defended the price-gouging protections shortly after they went into effect.
“In the days following the Los Angeles firestorms, we worked quickly to protect Los Angeles survivors from any form of exploitation,” he said in February 2025. “The state has the tools in place to not only block price gouging during this emergency, but also to prosecute bad actors.”
The Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs said it received more than 2,000 complaints after the fires, alleging that retailers and landlords were taking advantage of people put in hardship by their losses, and sent out more than 2,000 cease-and-desist letters to businesses and landlords for alleged price gouging, said Morine Merritt, who oversees department investigations into consumer and real estate fraud.
“Close to 90% of the complaints that we received involved allegations of rent increases,” Merritt said in an interview. Now that the fire-related protections have expired, existing laws and “regular market conditions determine price increases for goods and services, including rents,” she said.
Crackdowns on fire-related rent gouging have been rare, said Chelsea Kirk of the activist organization the Rent Brigade, which analyzed L.A. County’s rental market in the year after the fires. It reported 18,360 potential examples of price gouging in listings but said that few lawsuits had been filed by authorities so far.
Last week, Rent Brigade announced what it said was the first private civil lawsuit brought by a family that claimed to be rent-gouged in the aftermath of the wildfires. Plaintiffs Randall and Candy Renick, whose Altadena home was damaged, said they were charged nearly three times the maximum permitted rate for nearly 10 months. They seek restitution of $96,000 plus civil penalties and attorneys’ fees.
The rental market has probably stabilized since the fires, Kirk said, but other families may still be “locked into illegal rents” that they agreed to pay when they were in a rush to find housing after they were displaced.
Dear Mr. Pelley:
I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. While I’m new to 60 Minutes, I’ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner. It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday’s performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation-demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.
Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.
Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (“CBS”) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.
Sincerely,
Nick Bilton
Executive Producer, 60 Minutes
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