By Saabira Chaudhuri
European grocery chain Royal Ahold NV on Tuesday said it was in
the "final stages of negotiations" with Delhaize Group about a
potential merger but that "no definitive agreement on a transaction
has been reached."
Delhaize's shares jumped 7.5% in afternoon trading while Ahold's
climbed 1.4%.
The statement came after a Dutch business paper reported that
Ahold Chief Executive Dick Boer would head the merged company, and
that a deal would be announced this week. Het Financieele Dagblad
said the deal would be structured so that Ahold would get a 60%
stake and Delhaize would get 40%.
Ahold said it would put out a company statement on the matter
"in due course," but didn't offer a more definitive time frame.
The two grocers last month confirmed that they were conducting
preliminary discussions on merging. Ahold and Delhaize have been
thinking about a combination for years, reportedly having held
talks in 2006, as they seek greater scale and cost savings to take
on the competition.
An Ahold and Delhaize combination would create the
fourth-largest seller of groceries in the U.S. with about $46
billion in sales in the country last year, or 4.6% of the market,
according to Euromonitor International, and about 2,000 total U.S.
supermarkets. While Ahold and Delhaize generally have limited
overlap, analysts have noted that antitrust concerns in some parts
of the U.S. could be a hitch.
Write to Saabira Chaudhuri at saabira.chaudhuri@wsj.com
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