On the decision by the CMA to block the ASDA – Sainsbury’s merger, Patrick O’Brien, UK Retail Research Director at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“The CMA’s decision to block the Sainsbury’s – ASDA merger puts the heat on Sainsbury’s CEO Mike Coupe. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the CMA’s decision, he appears to have wasted a year chasing an impossible dream while its competitors took full advantage of its distraction. Its results over the last year have been poor, with store standards falling noticeably, and it must now refocus on retail basics rather than chase another big acquisition.

“One of the key mistakes Coupe made was in failing to offer any assurances on price cuts until the CMA’s devastating provisional findings in February: it built the rationale for the merger on the rather vague notion that it would reduce prices by 10% by putting pressure on major suppliers, though it didn’t make it clear how many products this would include. It only made some assurances of audited price investment later, but this might have had more sway if it had offered them at the start.

“The confidence Coupe placed in getting the deal past the CMA in light of its previous – generous – decision to allow Tesco to buy Booker looks like a bad misjudgement now. Mike Coupe may feel hard done by, but the CMA made clear that the Tesco-Booker deal was passed because it considered the acquisition to be a vertical one, by a retailer of a wholesaler, and so viewed that the combination did not significantly damage the competitiveness of either market. The rights and wrongs of that decision are debateable but it looks difficult for Coupe to argue that the CMA’s decision then is in direct contradiction of its decision regarding ASDA/Sainsbury’s now.

“ASDA’s performance does not give as much cause for concern as Sainsbury’s, which itself puts more pressure on Coupe. Why has ASDA been able to manage the distraction of the merger so much better?

“We do not believe Walmart will want to keep ASDA as it is now, and may look to sell ASDA to other suitors, but it would look unlikely that other major players in the UK would consider it, given the strictness the CMA has displayed. It opens the possibility of private equity or floating the business, or a foreign retailer entering the market. Amazon will always be speculated about, but we do not believe that taking on a major physical food presence in the UK fits with its strategy, despite the Whole Foods deal in the US, which was a distressed (i.e. cheap) business, more focussed on affluent customers.”