Asda takeover may force billionaire brothers to sell 50 petrol stations

The mergers watchdog has warned that the £6.8bn takeover of Asda by the billionaire Issa brothers could push selling prices up at the pump and demanded further assurances to prevent a comprehensive-blown investigation. 

The Competition and Markets Authority’s probe discovered 36 spots throughout the United kingdom wherever the tie-up could lead to bigger selling prices for motorists. 

EG Team, the forecourt giant owned by Mohsin and Zuber Issa, operates 395 petrol stations, while Asda owns 323 internet sites. The brothers are to merge Asda’s internet sites with their current forecourt empire in a separate £750m offer as part of their takeover of the supermarket.

The CMA only named one Asda superstore in Aberdeen as problematic.

Other spots wherever the two corporations overlap, according to details from Altus, include: Birmingham, with two EG internet sites and 6 Asda internet sites Leeds, with four EG internet sites and 5 Asda internet sites Liverpool, with a few EG internet sites and 6 Asda internet sites and Manchester, with 7 EG internet sites and eight Asda internet sites. 

Competition lawyers estimated that the new house owners of the supermarket chain would have to sell concerning forty and fifty internet sites to get the eco-friendly light from the regulator. 

Field veteran Gerald Ronson, who pioneered self-services petrol stations in the sixties, expressed an desire in buying some of the internet sites to increase to his current 265 places. 

“We’re in the current market to get the proper internet sites. If they have internet sites that they want to sell we would be happy to have a appear at them. We really do not have any credit card debt and we have sizeable cash. We’re buyers,” he said.