In June, 2013, Empire Company Limited, Sobey’s parent company, reached an agreement to buy more than 200 Safeway stores for $5.8 billion and completed the acquisition on November 4, 2013. At the time Empire was seen as a big winner since the only way to grow the company in a saturated market is to steal market share from competitors, acquisitions are an excellent method to achieve this goal. The acquisition was all cash bid with the financing structured in the following manner. The cash bid included the following:
• $1.8441 billion (~32%) Equity Offering
• $991.3 Million (~17%) Sale-leaseback of acquired real estate assets to Crombie Real Estate Income Trust (of which Empire owns 42.1%)
• $2.025 Billion (~35%) Term Credit Facilities (Bank loan)
• $1 Billion of…show more content… The culture dictates the company brand, operations structure, supplier negotiation, and logistics. Empire plans to merge the two unique cultures together, in order to take advantage of cost savings and synergies. As Peter Drucker once stated “ Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. The merger of the Sobeys and Safeway culture was a disaster. Sobeys also pledged to slash $200 million in annual costs within three years. The merger gave Empire buying power with the suppliers. In an attempt to bring down costs, Sobeys reduced vendor prices by 1% and accepted no supplier price increases in 2014. The changes led to dissatisfaction supplier. The supplier dissatisfaction and logistic problems made it difficult for the company to keep their shelves stock, which added to customer dissatisfaction. Sobeys executed the Safeway transformation by changing the Safeway systems to the Sobeys system. Sobeys eliminated the Safeway loyalty program, which was popular among Safeway customers. Sobeys phased out the Safeway’s store brand and replaced them with Compliment, a Sobeys’ brand of products. The changes led to many dissatisfied customers and decline in overall
