Seven Hundred and Eighty-Nine Days

On December 10, 2024, a federal judge in Oregon took the largest supermarket merger ever attempted in the United States and stopped it.

The agreement that died had been signed seven hundred and eighty-nine days earlier. Under its terms, dated October 13, 2022, The Kroger Co. would pay $34.10 for every Albertsons share, common and preferred - roughly $24.6 billion of enterprise value including some $4.7 billion of net debt, at a premium of 32.8 percent to the unaffected closing price of October 12. Between them the two companies employed more than 710,000 people and operated 4,996 stores, 66 distribution centers, 52 manufacturing plants, 3,972 pharmacies and 2,015 fuel centers across 48 states and the District of Columbia.

Vivek Sankaran, president and chief executive officer of Albertsons Companies, Inc., had spent more than two years defending that number in front of regulators. The United States District Court for the District of Oregon enjoined it in a single order.

There was no appeal. The notice of termination went to Kroger the same day.

The Outsider They Hired

He arrived from the supplier's side of the shelf. When Albertsons announced him on March 29, 2019, Sankaran was chief executive of PepsiCo Foods North America, a job he had held for four months; before that he had been president and chief operating officer of Frito-Lay North America from 2016, and before that chief commercial officer of PepsiCo North America. Ten years at PepsiCo, and before them a partnership at McKinsey & Company. His degrees run from a bachelor's in mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai to a master's in manufacturing from Georgia Tech and an MBA from Michigan.

The record ran through packaged goods and consulting, not store operations. He took the seat on April 25, 2019 with 270,000 associates reporting up to him.

In the announcement he said, "It is a great privilege to join a company that has such deep roots in American retail." Then he listed the banners, one after another - Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel Osco, Shaw's, ACME, Tom Thumb, Randall's - and added the sentence a packaged-goods executive does not get to say about a customer's shelf: "Our stores are integral to the lives of millions of customers each week."

Eleven months later the country closed.

Twenty-Six Percent In One Quarter

The sixteen weeks ended June 20, 2020 were the strangest quarter in the modern history of American food retail, and Albertsons had them. Identical sales rose 26.5 percent. Digital sales rose 276 percent. Adjusted EBITDA reached $1.7 billion, up 93 percent on the prior year. Net income was $586 million.

The company also spent roughly $615 million on the pandemic in that quarter alone - more than $275 million of it in appreciation pay to front-line associates, $53 million to hunger relief.

Sankaran's account of it began with the people in the stores: "I am inspired by the many ways my colleagues continue to step up to serve our customers and help our communities around the country during this time of need."

A surge is not a strategy. The comparison year would be brutal by arithmetic alone, and the question underneath the record quarter was what a 2,200-store chain would be worth once the demand normalised.

The Price He Agreed To

His answer was to test the market. Albertsons announced a board-led review of strategic alternatives in February 2022. Eight months later the review had a buyer, and the terms made clear which company was being bought: Kroger's chairman and chief executive would continue as chairman and chief executive of the combination.

Albertsons shareholders would take $34.10 a share, of which up to $4 billion - roughly $6.85 per share - would be paid out as a special cash dividend on November 7, three weeks after the announcement and years before the deal could close.

"At Albertsons Cos., we are guided by an ambition to create customers for life." That was Sankaran on the morning of October 14, 2022. He finished on the phrase the next two years would test: the two companies would work together to "capture the compelling opportunities ahead."

Capture required the government's consent.

Four Hundred And Thirteen Stores

The consent had an asking price, and on September 8, 2023 the companies published it: 413 stores, eight distribution centers, two offices and five private label brands across seventeen states and the District of Columbia, sold to C&S Wholesale Grocers. The QFC, Mariano's and Carrs names went with them, along with the exclusive right to the Albertsons banner in four states.

Sankaran said of the buyer, "I have long respected C&S and its leadership team." The release pointed at the thing the divestiture was built to protect: every collective bargaining agreement then in place.

It was not enough. The matter reached the District of Oregon as Federal Trade Commission et al. v. The Kroger Company and Albertsons Companies, Inc.

The Cost Of Waiting

The bill for the wait shows up in the numbers Albertsons filed four weeks after the injunction. In the twelve weeks ended November 30, 2024, identical sales rose 2.0 percent, digital sales 23 percent, loyalty membership 15 percent to 44.3 million. Net income was $401 million. The board raised the quarterly dividend by 25 percent, to fifteen cents.

Underneath, selling and administrative expenses climbed to 25.1 percent of revenue from 24.8 percent, and the company attributed the increase first to merger-related costs. Albertsons was still paying to close a deal that no longer existed.

Sankaran's framing was flat to the point of austerity. The quarter was solid, he said, "in an environment where the consumer remains cautious."

The Date He Set

On March 3, 2025 the board named Susan Morris, the chief operations officer, as his successor. Morris would take the chair on May 1 and his board seat with it - a company veteran of nearly forty years replacing the outsider hired six years earlier.

He signed off on April 15 with the fiscal 2024 accounts: identical sales up 2.0 percent for the year, digital up 24 percent, net income of $959 million, adjusted EBITDA of $4,005 million. The strategy, he said, had positioned the company for "its next chapter of growth and value creation for shareholders."

Then, in the same paragraph, no preamble: "I am retiring as of May 1, 2025, and am delighted that the Board of Directors has selected Susan Morris to succeed me as CEO."

One hundred and forty-two days after the injunction, he was gone.

What The Next Board Wanted

On February 18, 2026, nine months after he left Boise, Global Payments Inc. named him an independent director, effective the following day. The company said the appointment followed its engagement with Elliott Investment Management, announced on September 29, 2025. Its chief executive framed the hire around a single task: integrating Worldpay.

So Sankaran takes a seat on a board an investor's engagement helped reshape, at a company in the middle of absorbing an acquisition it has to make work.

He has held the other chair. The last time the decision belonged to somebody else, it took seven hundred and eighty-nine days, and the answer was no.