Albertsons presses $9.3 billion damages claim against Kroger over failed merger
Lawyers for Albertsons made the demand in Delaware Chancery Court, where a two-week trial on the collapsed deal begins later this month, Bloomberg reports.
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Albertsons has put a dollar figure on what it says Kroger owes for the collapse of their merger. The Wall Street Journal reports the claim at $8 billion. Bloomberg and Investing.com report it at more than $9.3 billion, made Monday in a filing in Delaware Chancery Court ahead of a two-week trial later this month.
That larger figure, according to Investing.com, is made up of the premium Albertsons shareholders would have received had the deal closed, the $600 million termination fee Kroger already paid, $75 million in interest, and other costs. Albertsons is asking Judge Lori Will to find that Kroger willfully breached the merger agreement by failing to use its best efforts to win regulatory approval, including refusing to change its plan for which stores to sell off, Investing.com reports. The original agreement required Kroger to clear any antitrust obstacle but capped its divestiture obligation at 650 stores, according to Albertsons' court filing cited by Investing.com.
Kroger has rejected the accusations. It says it exhausted every avenue available to secure approval, and has accused Albertsons of working with C&S Wholesale Grocers to push regulators toward demanding a bigger sell-off, Bloomberg reported via a wire report. The merger, originally valued at $24.6 billion, was blocked by a federal court in December 2024, according to Bloomberg.
A claim of this size, whichever figure prevails, reopens the financial fallout from the deal well beyond the $600 million fee already paid. It would rank among the largest post-breakup damage claims the grocery sector has seen, and it signals that Albertsons believes Kroger's divestiture strategy doomed the merger from the outset. Kroger's board, meanwhile, continues its normal capital returns, including a quarterly dividend declared last month, suggesting the company is not treating the claim as an immediate threat to its balance sheet. For now the dispute adds a legal overhang to Kroger without changing its near-term operations.