BY CLAIRE RUSH AND DEE-ANN DURBIN
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The chief executive officers of Kroger and Albertsons insisted Wednesday — under questioning from the federal government — that merging would allow the two supermarket companies to lower prices and more effectively compete with retail giants like Walmart, Costco and Amazon.
Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen and Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran appeared in Oregon’s U.S. District Court to testify against the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to block the proposed merger of their companies. During the hearing, the commission’s lawyers suggested that the merger would hurt competition in certain areas where the two are each other’s primary rivals.
“The day that we merge is the day that we will begin lowering prices,” McMullen said while under questioning by a lawyer representing his company.
The two companies proposed what would be the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history in October 2022, after Kroger
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