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By Jack Newsham Globe Correspondent June 24, 2015


The global parent company of Stop & Shop has agreed to buy the owner of Hannaford for $10.4 billion, creating the fifth-biggest US supermarket retailer in the industry’s biggest transaction for almost a decade.
Royal Ahold NV, the Dutch company that owns Stop & Shop, said buying the Delhaize Group would generate cost savings of $559 million per year by 2019. Both companies have grocery stores in several European countries and the eastern US, and Massachusetts is the main area of overlap between them.
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In the US, Delhaize Group operates the Hannafords and Food Lion chains. Ahold currently operates 131 Stop & Shop supermarkets in Massachusetts, and 214 across New England. Delhaize has 25 Hannafords in the state, and 183 in New England. Stop & Shop is the largest grocery chain in New England; Hannaford is the third largest.
Some elements of the deal are unclear. The companies said they expect the deal to close in mid-2016, but didn’t say whether any stores would be renamed or closed. There are also some differences between the chains owned by Ahold and Delhaize: Stop & Shop stores tend to be larger, and prices at the store are higher than at Hannaford, according to a survey by the non-profit Consumers’ Checkbook.
Still, analysts have said they expect the deal to be approved by government competition authorities. Barclays analysts said only about 5 percent of the companies’ US grocery stores could be described as “overlapping,” according to Bloomberg. Supermarket experts told the Globe the companies may have to sell off some of their locations, or they could try to make the case to regulators that the deal wouldn’t hurt consumers.