An official inquiry has been launched into Asda's completed £600mln deal to buy the Co-op's petrol station business by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
The UK competition watchdog is now inviting comments on the transaction until the end of the month after first signalling it was looking into the deal in October 2022.
A decision on the first phase of the inquiry is expected by March 14.
The CMA did not disclose any further details of the parameters of its inquiry or whether it would factor in EG Group forecourts, which are also run by Asda’s joint owners the Issa brothers.
The deal was completed towards the end of last year and saw 2,300 workers move over to the supermarket giant.
Location intelligence experts CACI has looked into the sites owned by Asda and EG Group and found that 12 to 16 of the 132 Co-op sites could be in breach of the CMA’s ‘four to three rule’, whereby a deal that reduced the number of sites in a local area that were owned by different operators from four to three would significantly lessen competition.