ZAANDAM, Netherlands -- Dutch retail giant Royal Ahold NV has put its U.S. Foodservice unit and Tops Markets LLC supermarket chain up for sale, and said it will concentrate on increasing revenue at its Stop & Shop and Giant supermarket chains, reported Bloomberg.
The deals will raise more than 4 billion euros ($5.1 billion), CEO Anders Moberg said at a news conference Monday in Amsterdam. The company said it will return about 2 billion euros to shareholders.
U.S. Foodservice brought Ahold close to bankruptcy in 2003 after [image-nocss] an accounting scandal, said the report. In August, Centaurus Capital Ltd. and Paulson & Co., which own 6% of the retailer, urged Ahold to sell all of its U.S. stores as competition from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kroger Co. eroded profitability.
It is now time for us to focus our efforts on strengthening our retail competitive position, particularly in the United States, Moberg, 56, said in his statement.
Ahold bought U.S. Foodservicethe No. 2 U.S. food distributor, after Houston-based Sysco Corp.for $3.6 billion in 2000. It last year split the unit into one division that serves hospitals and schools and another focusing on fast-food chains.
The Tops chain, acquired in 1991, operates 121 supermarkets and superstores in New York, Cleveland, Ohio and northern Pennsylvania.
The announcement comes just a few weeks after Royal Ahold agreed to sell 18 of its 46 Ohio stores to Giant Eagle Inc. and one year after the company sold off Tops' Wilson Farms convenience stores, added a report by Business First of Buffalo. It sold the c-store chain to Wilson Farms Inc., Buffalo, N.Y., the local acquisition team for WFI Acquisition, Inc., a corporation formed by Nanco Enterprises Inc. and Bruckmann, Rosser, Sherrill & Co Inc.
The newspaper said that Price Chopper may be interested in buying Tops, according to Neil Golub, president and CEO of the Golub Corp., Rotterdam, N.Y. "We are interested in taking a look at what is available," Golub told the newspaper. "We'll do our research and we'll decide what to do."
Price Chopper, which owns 115 supermarkets in six states, bought six Tops stores last year, the report said. A number of the existing Tops are located near Price Chopper supermarkets.
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