March 4, Michael L. Davis, economics professor at the Cox School of Business, SMU Dallas, for a piece critical of the Federal Trade Commission for attempting to stop the merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons. Published in the Orange County Register under the heading FTC doesn’t realize who Kroger and Albertsons are really competing against: https://tinyurl.com/46vn6ndr
Kroger wants to acquire Albertson’s. The Federal Trade Commission wants to stop them. Reasonable people can disagree about whether Kroger is making a good business decision— the price they’ll pay, about $25 billion, is a lot of money. But everybody who’s been paying attention to the way Americans eat should agree that the FTC’s lawsuit to block the deal is ridiculous.
If this was nothing more than a story of a risky, complicated merger and a clueless, bumbling bureaucracy, there wouldn’t be much more to say. Cincinnati-based Kroger is trying to make a living in a low margin/high competition business. Mergers and acquisitions are just part of their life. Everybody knows that. The FTC has been filing silly cases since 1914. Everybody knows that, too.
But let’s think for a moment about what this soap opera on the business page reveals about the stunning transformation in the way we live our lives.
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