Andrea Felsted, Columnist

Sainsbury Should Now Walk Away From Asda Deal

The regulator’s unexpectedly harsh ruling gives CEO Mike Coupe a way to abandon the merger. He should take it.

February 20, 2019 at 8:26 AM UTC

Andrea Felsted is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering consumer goods and the retail industry. Previously, she was a reporter for the Financial Times.

Tough times for this tieup.
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

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Sasda is looking more like Sad-sda after U.K. regulators said on Wednesday they could block the proposed combination of J Sainsbury Plc and Walmart Inc.’s British subsidiary, Asda.

The Competition and Markets Authority’s findings are more onerous than even the worse case scenarios that the two companies or financial analysts had mapped out.