By Tamara Chuang | The Colorado Sun
A day after two judges in two lawsuits ruled against the proposed $24.6 billion supermarket merger, Albertsons Companies said Wednesday it would end its merger agreement with Kroger.
“Given the recent federal and state court decisions to block our proposed merger with Kroger, we have made the difficult decision to terminate the merger agreement. We are deeply disappointed in the courts’ decisions,” Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran said.
At the same time, the Idaho grocery chain, which owns 105 Safeway and Albertsons grocery stores in Colorado, said it filed a lawsuit against Kroger for breach of merger agreement accusing the larger supermarket chain “repeatedly refusing to divest assets necessary for antitrust approval, ignoring regulators’ feedback, rejecting stronger divestiture buyers,” the company said in a statement.