Morrison in £3bn Safeway bid

13 April 2012

VETERAN grocer Sir Ken Morrison has launched a new £3bn takeover bid for rival supermarkets group Safeway. The Safeway board is backing the offer.

He and his directors and advisers put the finishing touches to their plans over the weekend.

The new cash-and-paper offer of 283p a share, including 60p per share in cash, will bring the long-running takeover battle for Safeway into its final stages, nearly a year after Morrison first made its initial all-share £2.9bn bid in January.

Safeway shares closed at 283 3/4p on Friday.

In September, Morrison was cleared by the regulators to bid for Safeway on condition it sold 52 stores in a ruling that blocked rivals Tesco, J Sainsbury, and Wal-Mart's Asda from entering the fray.

Safeway shareholders staged a last-ditch attempt to extract a better price from Morrisons, which initially bid in January.

David Webster, Safeway's chairman, had been connsidering a break-up if the Morrisons offer was too low.

Giant Asda Wal-Mart offered £2bn last week for just 70 Safeway stores, but its foray has borne fruit.

The combined Morrisons-Safeway group will have 550 stores and generate sales in excess of £12bn.

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