Mega-Merger Mania strikes again

[thatcrazycajun]

This evening, as my Songbird frantically rushed to finish preparations to skip the country tomorrow (that is, to take up her new CDC job in Nairobi, Kenya), she asked if I could get some prescriptions filled for her. Since the Kaiser Permanente clinic where she normally would do this was long since closed for the night, she asked me to go to the nearest Eckerd Drug Store, that being the only major drug chain in the area that takes Kaiser coverage for scrips.

Imagine my surprise, upon visiting Eckerd's website to check pharmacy hours, to find a banner on the home page reading "Eckerd is becoming Rite Aid." Yep, the same Camp Hill, PA-based national chain that a decade and change ago ate K&B Drugstores, a longtime Gulf Coast retail institution I grew up with in south Louisiana, is now poised, with federal regulators having approved its $3.5 billion deal with the owners of Eckerd, to consign another storied, trusted retailer's name to history. The Pittsburgh local paper reports on the deal here; somehow our local rag managed to miss reporting on this locally-significant little bit of business news, or I missed seeing it when they did, as this was the first I learned of it.

The deal's approval means that every Eckerd store will soon bear the blue-and-red Rite Aid shield in place of the familiar blue Eckerd capsule shape, and at least 23 stores will have to be closed altogether to satisfy regulators' antitrust concerns. Just as CVS absorbed DC-area Peoples' Drug about the same time as K&B's demise, and several smaller chains previously were subsumed into Rite Aid, so now with Eckerd. This will now extend Rite Aid's tentacles into those regions of the South where they had previously not achieved entry with the K&B purchase.

And they call this progress.

Comments

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that Eckerd was owned by JC Penney (or at least a significant piece of it was), so I don't know if you can truly say it's a conglomerate sucking up a little guy as much as it's one conglomerate buying a piece of another conglomerate.

My local Eckerd used to be the best drugstore on the planet but has gone very downhill in the last 5 years. CVS is still a step down.

Peoples' Drug needed to be put out of its misery. I was happy about that merger. Anyone had to be better. CVS is lame, but People's was the worst.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Yes, and they've been trying to sell it for at least 3 years.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, JCPenney sold its interest in Eckerd a couple years back to The Jean Coutu Group, and it is this firm that has merged with Rite Aid. So says every online article I've seen on the deal.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Actually, JCPenney sold its interest in Eckerd a couple years back to The Jean Coutu Group, and it is this firm that has merged with Rite Aid. So says every online article I've seen on the deal.