Supervalu to Buy Albertsons

By Rachelle Bowden in Food on Jan 23, 2006 8:31PM

Poor, troubled Albertsons, who owns 202 local Jewel and Jewel-Osco stores, finally has made an agreement with a buyer. Today, Supervalu Inc., most notably the owners of Cub Foods, agreed to purchase the chain for $9.7 billion in cash & stock. As a kind of domino effect, to avoid anti-trust problems in Chicago, Supervalu then has to sell its 26 Cub Foods stores to Cerberus Capital Management. Although Supervalu will be will operate the existing Jewel stores, they say that there will not be many changes.

All in all, buying a total of 1,124 Albertsons stores will make Supervalu the 2nd largest supermarket company in the US. Oh, and say "bye-bye" to the local freestanding Osco stores, they'll be sold off to CVS and will be renamed CVS.