The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Deal
Flickinger said the Albertsons deal may have been “the last, best, and final opportunity for Rite Aid’s longer term viability.”
Privately held Albertsons Cos., based in Boise, Idaho, was offering either a share of its stock and $1.83 in cash or slightly more than one Albertsons share for every 10 Rite Aid shares. But that offer attracted widespread opposition.
One of Rite Aid’s biggest shareholders, Highfields Capital Management, said that deal was “in the best interests of Albertsons and Rite Aid management, but not Rite Aid shareholders.” The investment firm said in June that it would vote its roughly 47 million shares against the deal.
Two prominent shareholder advisory firms — Glass Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services — also recommended no votes. Glass Lewis said the deal was “not critical to Rite Aid’s viability” and provided no meaningful premium to investors.
ISS, meanwhile, said it was concerned that the deal would introduce a new set of risks from the grocery business.
Walgreens also had tried unsuccessfully to buy all of Rite Aid in a deal that fell apart last year after encountering regulatory resistance. The Deerfield, Illinois, company then settled for buying a portion of Rite Aid’s stores for about $4.38 billion.
Shares of Rite Aid fell nearly 12 percent to $1.54 Thursday afternoon, the stock’s worst sell-off in a year. chlorpyrifos.”
Federal law requires EPA to ensure that pesticides used on food in the United States are safe for human consumption — especially children, who are typically far more sensitive to the negative effects of poisons.
Shortly after his appointment by President Donald Trump in 2017, Pruitt announced he was revering the Obama administration effort to ban chlorpyrifos, adopting Dow’s position that the science showing chlorpyrifos is harmful was inconclusive and flawed.
The Associated Press reported in June 2017 that Pruitt announced his agency’s reversal on chlorpyrifos just 20 days after his official schedule showed a meeting with Dow CEO Andrew Liveris. At the time, Liveris headed a White House manufacturing working group, and his company had written a $1 million check to help underwrite Trump’s inaugural festivities.
Following AP’s report, then-EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said that March 9, 2017, meeting on Pruitt’s schedule never happened. Bowman said the two men had instead shared only a “brief introduction in passing” while attending the same industry conference at a Houston hotel and that they never discussed chlorpyrifos.
However, internal EPA emails released earlier this year following a public records lawsuit filed by The Sierra Club suggest the two men shared more than a quick handshake.
Little more than a week after the conference and before Pruitt announced his decision, the EPA chief’s scheduler reached out to Liveris’ executive assistant to schedule a follow-up meeting.
“Hope this email finds you well!” wrote Sydney Hupp, Pruitt’s assistant, on March 20, 2017. “I am reaching out today about setting up a meeting to continue the discussion between Dow Chemical and Administrator Scott Pruitt. My apologies for the delay in getting this email into you — it has been a crazy time over here!”
Subsequent emails show Hupp and Liveris’ office discussing several potential dates that the Dow CEO might come to Pruitt’s office at EPA headquarters, but it is not clear from the documents whether the two men ever linked up.
Liveris announced his retirement from Dow in March of this year.
Pruitt resigned July 6 amid more than a dozen ethics investigations focused on such issues as outsized security spending, first-class flights and a sweetheart condo lease for a Capitol Hill condo linked to an energy lobbyist.
Bowman, who left EPA in May to work for GOP Sen. Joni Ernest of Iowa, declined to comment on her earlier characterization of the March 2017 interaction between Pruitt and Liveris or what “discussion” the internal email was referring to.
“I don’t work for EPA anymore,” Bowman said.