When the Federal Trade Commission in January cleared grocery chain Albertsons Cos. to buy rival Safeway Inc., it insisted that the two companies sell 168 of their stores to rivals to preserve competition and protect consumers from higher prices, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. The FTC allowed the small Pacific Northwest supermarket operator Haggen Holdings LLC to buy most of the stores, and Haggen quickly ballooned to 164 locations throughout the West from 18 in Washington and Oregon. Just months later, however, the rapid expansion appears to have been more than the company could handle, and the FTC-approved plan might have been a major mistake. Instead of becoming a regional powerhouse, Haggen is struggling to stay afloat. The company filed for bankruptcy protection last month and began closing 26 of its recently purchased stores. It then announced plans to close 100 more locations and realign its business around 37 “core stores.”
