PATRICIA Hewitt's ruling yesterday is to be both welcomed and congratulated, and should be hailed as a victory for the consumer.
A successful Morrison-Safeway combination will provide consumers with a more powerful fourth supermarket choice, able to compete more effectively in price with the big three.
Conversely, consumers could have been left with just the three players and a handful of smaller operators.
The big three could have then dwindled to two, had Asda, Sainsbury, or Tesco been allowed to bid, because such a lax competition ruling could have left the door open for yet another big deal.
The great unknown factor in the bid battle remains whether retail entrepreneur Philip Green will bid against Wm Morrison.
However, Hewitt's insistence that Tesco, Asda, or Sainsbury cannot buy any Safeway stores - except the 53 Morrison must divest if its bid is successful - effectively ends the ambitions of financial buyers which thought Safeway could be snapped up, stripped, and sold on.
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