Although Green has been the most successful UK retailer in recent years, he has no direct experience of the food industry. However, his bid team include Alan Leighton, former Chief Executive of Asda.But Leighton's former colleague at Asda, Archie Norman, is involved with another of the rival bids, headed by the US buyout specialist Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. KKR owned Safeway in the mid-1980s,a after it bought the US parent company, before selling off the UK subsidiary for around £800 million ($1.2 billion). It will have to bid around three times that amount if it is to buy it back now.
Both the potential KKR and Green bids have the twin merits of being all-cash offers and not having the uncertainty of a Competition Commission investigation, which faces all three other bids from Morrisons; Sainsbury's and Asda Wal-Mart. The Office of fair Trading is expected to decide before the end of March if there are competition issues to consider, after which a full investigation will get under way, which could stretch the Safeway bidding war out into the Summer and even beyond.
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