Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday cleared two of the biggest hurdles it needed to close its US$13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc, with approvals from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the grocery chain’s shareholders.
The commission said in a statement it would not pursue its investigation into the proposed merger further after reviewing whether the deal would substantially lessen competition or constituted an unfair method of competition.
Amazon said it was on track to close the merger, expected sometime this year.
Earlier on Wednesday, Whole Foods said its shareholders voted in favor of the deal.
Buying Whole Foods gives the world’s largest online retailer a foothold in the US$700 billion US grocery market, key for it to grab a greater share of shoppers’ wallets.
It also gives Amazon more than 465 brick-and-mortar stores where it could showcase products and ready packages for home delivery.
The marriage between the online retailer and the pioneer organic grocery seller has sent shockwaves through the supermarket industry, already in the midst of a price war.
Much larger grocers like Kroger Co, with 2,796 retail food stores, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc are racing to add online shopping options so they do not give ground to Amazon. Meanwhile, they are being forced to discount items as German grocery chains Aldi and Lidl expand in the US.
“They’re definitely under pressure,” eMarketer analyst Patricia Orsini said.
Without “some sort of e-commerce strategy... you’re going to lose those shoppers to a competitor,” she said.
Whole Foods shares rose 0.7 percent in after-hours trading to US$41.96, still shy of the deal’s US$42 per-share price tag. Amazon shares dipped 0.4 percent, while shares of Kroger and Wal-Mart were largely unchanged.
Antitrust experts had expected the deal to win US government approval because Amazon sells few groceries currently and Whole Foods itself makes up a small fraction of US food sales.
However, Consumer Watchdog, a group that had urged the commission to take action to block the merger, said in a statement it was disappointed.
“Apparently the only way to hold Amazon accountable for its abuse of consumers is at the state level,” the group said.
The FTC said on Wednesday that it “always has the ability to investigate anticompetitive conduct should such action be warranted.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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