I covered this topic a while back.

For some reason, retail mergers never go well ... see the Somerfield/Kwik Save and Morrisons/Safeway debacles, or Tesco and M&S expansion abroad, or the Sainsbury/Homebase takeover (Sainsbury sold Homebase again a few years later, having bought it from, rather bizarrely, Ladbrokes when it was still called Texas), the Woolworths/Kingfisher demerger (continued page 94).

So this does not bode well for the Co-op.