Wholesaler Booker will update on trading on Thursday amid mounting calls for a competition inquiry into its £3.7 billion merger with supermarket giant Tesco.
Morrisons chairman Andy Higginson, who is also a former finance director at Tesco, was the latest to wade into the debate, saying earlier this month that the tie-up will "exert even more power over thousands of retailers" and warning it could be harder than expected to clear competition hurdles.
Tesco and Booker have so far played down competition concerns, claiming that Booker's network of stores is almost entirely made up of franchisees operating independently.
But the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is widely expected to launch a probe soon.
Booker is the country's largest wholesaler and owns the Londis and Budgens convenience store brands, as well as Happy Shopper and Premier.
While Tesco is mainly a food retailer, it does also own the One Stop convenience store chain that effectively competes with Booker.
Tesco said on announcing the deal, which the pair are billing as a merger, that it will create "the UK's leading food business" and deliver cost savings of £200 million for the combined group.
The companies said the deal would bring "benefits for consumers, independent retailers, caterers, small businesses, suppliers and colleagues, as well as delivering significant value to shareholders".
Booker's fourth quarter update meanwhile will reveal if the group managed to maintain the solid trading seen in its third quarter, when like-for-like sales rose 3.2%.
A 1% fall in tobacco sales offset an otherwise impressive 5.1% non-tobacco sales hike.
Booker sells branded and own-brand goods to around 120,000 retail customers, 450,000 catering customers and 700,000 small business customers.
It has around 200 stores in the UK and around 18,000 product lines.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here