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You'll soon be buying bulgur wheat salad* from Amazon, after it swallowed Whole Foods

13.7 billion Bezos bucks buys luxury retailer

Today, Amazon announced it will be acquiring the devilishly expensive Whole Foods Market to the tune of $13.7bn.

“Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy,” said health-conscious Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement.

The transaction is pending approval from Whole Foods Market’s shareholders and the usual regulatory and closing condition suspects, of course.

An Amazon ecommerce competitor in China, Alibaba, has been pretty active in the supermarket world these days. On 29 May it took its latest stake in a Chinese supermarket, for example.

Amazon already offers groceries through Amazon Fresh and Amazon Pantry – it's even trying to grab greater market share by offering a discount on Amazon Prime to recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – but Whole Foods takes Amazon’s grocery game to the next level. The luxury, transatlantic health-food supermarket chain, which has stores in the US, Canada and the UK, will part with its shares for $42 a pop. That comes to a value of $13.7bn including debt. Whole Foods' headquarters will remain in Austin, Texas.

Obviously, once news of the transatlantic brand’s brilliant acquisition by Amazon hit the market, supermarket shares in the UK quivered, as Business Insider reports.

There’s no telling what will happen next in this topsy-turvy world. To compete with Amazon, Google might have to acquire Walmart. Or Microsoft could acquire Sainsbury’s... ®

* See below

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