Sainsbury's and Asda are set to merge, to create one huge super-supermarket.
What it means: If successful, the merging of the second and third biggest supermarkets in the UK will create a grocery giant, with 31.4 per cent of the market share. It will employ 330,000 people, in 2,800 stores, bringing in £51 billion a year. In other words, it's gonna be massive.
Sainsbury's chief exec thinks the two companies will operate more efficiently as one, and have stronger buying power when dealing with suppliers. Those cut costs will be handed on to consumers. He says prices could be lowered by as much as 10 per cent.
That sounds like great news for shoppers, but not everyone is quite so positive. The Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) has said it is likely to investigate the merger. It wants to make sure they're not reducing choice for consumers – if you used to have a Sainsbury's and Asda in your area, you could choose between the two, but now you'll have no choice but to go to Sasdabury's.
Rebecca Long-Bailey, Business Secretary for the Labour Party, said she's also worried about how this is going to affect suppliers, and whether this super-supermarket will have the power to push prices down to a level that would be damaging to them.
