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ROTTERDAM
Tops sale may hurt Price Chopper plans
BY JAMES SCHLETT Gazette Reporter

   Price Chopper’s westward push could meet resistance as a multibillion-dollar private equity firm acquires a major western New York supermarket chain.
   Dutch global grocer Royal Ahold last week announced it will sell Tops to Morgan Stanley Private Equity. The Morgan Stanley Investment Management arm plans to retain the chain’s 10,000-person labor force and continue operating all of its Tops and Martin’s Super Food Store locations.
   The $310 million deal could stunt the growth plans of the Rotterdam-based Price Chopper, which had expressed interest in the Tops stores when Ahold put them on the market in November.
   Price Chopper President and Chief Executive Officer Neil Golub last year said he was “certainly interested in those locations.” Golub said he was examining the Tops stores, but it is not clear whether Price Chopper bid on them.
   “The whole issue that the company was bought en masse is reassuring for all involved,” said Jim Rogers, president and CEO of the Food Industry Alliance of New York State, a trade organization in Albany.
   Rogers said Morgan Stanley emerged as an unexpected winning bidder for Tops. A Price Chopper spokeswoman could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
   The Rotterdam chain in 2005 acquired six of 31 Tops stores Ahold sold in eastern and central New York. The sale of the remaining Tops locations, which include 71 company-owned stores and five franchise stores, would have opened markets to Price Chopper as far as Rochester and Buffalo. Price Chopper has more than 116 stores in six states, with its New York stores reaching as far west as Oswego.
   Tops was founded in the 1960s in the Buffalo area, where it currently has 46 supermarkets. Ahold acquired the chain in 1991.
   Ahold is selling the Tops brand because it only wants to be in areas where it believes it can hold the No. 1 or No. 2 positions in terms of market share.
   Price Chopper’s interest in the Ahold supermarkets was opposed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1 and International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 264, which represent Tops workers. The unions decried Price Chopper’s potential bid because the Rotterdam chain replaced the organized labor force at the six Tops supermarkets it acquired in 2005 with nonunion workers.
   The New York City-based Morgan Stanley is calling on former Tops CEO Frank Curci to revamp the under-performing supermarket chain in central and western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. The private equity firm said it intends to consolidate Tops’ merchandising, information technology and finance operations.  

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Price Chopper’s interest in the Ahold supermarkets was opposed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1 and International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 264, which represent Tops workers. The unions decried Price Chopper’s potential bid because the Rotterdam chain replaced the organized labor force at the six Tops supermarkets it acquired in 2005 with nonunion workers.

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The New York City-based Morgan Stanley is calling on former Tops CEO Frank Curci to revamp the under-performing supermarket chain in central and western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. The private equity firm said it intends to consolidate Tops’ merchandising, information technology and finance operations.