Sainsbury’s and Asda vow £1bn merger price cuts - Ashdale Business Consulting

Sainsbury’s and Asda vow £1bn merger price cuts

 

Sainsbury’s and Asda say their planned merger will save them £1.6bn and allow them to pass on £1bn in price cuts to savers.

Sainsbury’s also says it will cap the amount of profit it makes on petrol.

It says it will invite an independent body to check this promise in public.

The supermarket giants are battling to convince the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to allow them to merge, a move that would see them overtake Tesco to become the UK’s biggest chain.

The CMA said last month it could block the merger between Sainsbury’s, the UK’s second-biggest supermarket chain and Asda the third biggest, currently owned by US giant Walmart.

The CMA says such a move would result in higher prices and less choice.

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The CMA said that if it did allow the merger to proceed, it could force the sale of a large number of stores or even one of the brand names.

On Tuesday, Sainsbury’s and Asda’s joint statement said the CMA’s provisional findings contained “significant errors”.

In a robust statement, it criticised the CMA’s threshold at which concerns were triggered. It said this was set at an “unprecedentedly low level”, which, therefore, generated an unreasonably high number of areas of concern.

Click here to read more (Source: BBC News)