Skip to footer

Safeway sold for $9.4 billion, will merge with Albertsons

With Safeway sold, probably in the fourth quarter, shareholders will get $40 a share, most of it in cash. The company Safeway will be sold to – AB Acquisition – operates Albertsons, ACME, Jewel-Osco, Lucky, Shaw's, and Star Market. 

|
Ross D. Franklin/AP/File
Safeway brand grocery store products are shown in Laveen, Ariz. Now that the chain will be sold, Safeway shareholders will net $40 per share, $32.50 of it in cash.
  • By John Hilliard Contributor

AB Acquisition will spend more than $9 billion for grocery store giant Safeway (SWY) in a deal that AB says will pay out $40 per share and create a grocery company with thousands of stores and 250,000 workers.

“This transaction offers us the opportunity to better serve customers by adapting more quickly to evolving shopping preferences in diverse regions across the country,” says Albertsons chief executive, Bob Miller, who will lead the combined organization, in a statement.

According to the same statement, Safeway shareholders will receive an estimated $40 per share, including $32.50 per share in cash. With about 235 million Safeway shares, that puts the value of the deal at about $9.4 billion.

The merger will create a company with more than 250,000 workers spread among its 2,400 stores, 27 distribution facilities, and 20 manufacturing plants when the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

Safeway, which was founded in 1926, earned about $3.5 billion in profits on more than $36.1 billion in revenue in 2013, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

The chain had 1,335 stores by the end of 2013, plus owns its own facilities for producing milk, baked goods, ice cream, soda, and other grocery items.

Safeway also owns 49 percent of Casa Ley S.A. de C.V., the fifth-largest food and general merchandise retailer in Mexico. Safeway also controls the Vons, Pavilion’s, Randall’s, Tom Thumb and Carrs stores, according to Cerberus.

AB Acquisition operates stores under the Albertsons, ACME, Jewel-Osco, Lucky, Shaw’s, Star Market, and Super Saver names. It’s owned by a group of investors led by Cerberus Capital Management, which includes former Vice President Dan Quayle among its senior leadership.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Safeway sold for $9.4 billion, will merge with Albertsons
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2014/0307/Safeway-sold-for-9.4-billion-will-merge-with-Albertsons
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe