Cerberus To Buy Albertsons Grocery Stores In $3.3 Billion Deal

The investment group Cerberus Capital Management LP will buy Albertsons stores from Supervalu for $3.3 billion according to The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Here’s more from the Times’ DealBook blog:

The Cerberus-led group will also buy up to 30 percent of Supervalu itself, paying $4 a share in a tender offer. That represents a 50 percent premium to the grocery chain operator’s 30-day average closing price and nearly 32 percent higher to Wednesday’s closing price.

At a minimum, the investor consortium will own at least 19.9 percent of Supervalu. – NYTimes.com

Here’s information from the Wall Street Journal:

Under an agreement announced Thursday, Cerberus and some real-estate firms would pay $100 million for 877 stores, including Albertsons, Acme, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s and Star Market outlets. The deal includes $3.2 billion in debt, for a total enterprise value of $3.3 billion.

In buying Albertsons, Cerberus aims to reunite those stores with other Albertsons stores it already owns. In 2006, a Cerberus-led group acquired more than 650 underperforming Albertsons stores as part of a larger deal to dismantle that grocer, Albertsons Inc. – WSJ.com

Albertsons was founded in Boise, Idaho in 1939. In 2006, Albertsons Inc. split into pieces and the majority of it was acquired by grocery store giant Supervalu.  Minneapolis-based Supervalu purchased the company in a $17.4 billion deal.

Here is a press release on today’s deal from Supervalu.