Acquisition of Albertsons
Full coverage by BoiseDev
PORTLAND, OR — Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran testified during a hearing in Portland about an unknown number of text messages he had deleted.
As BoiseDev reported last week, Sankaran was one of several Albertsons executives who apparently did not release all of their text messages, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
On Wednesday, lawyers from the FTC and Albertsons questioned him about the reasons for deleting the texts.
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Sankaran said sometime in 2022, the same year Kroger and Albertsons began talking about the acquisition, he turned on the auto-delete text message feature on his phone.
Sankaran said he didn’t realize the auto-deletion was enabled until he testified about the case earlier this year. He said he never intentionally deleted texts about the takeover.
Sankaran has a phone that he uses for both work and personal life. He said he sends about 10 work-related text messages per workday and testified that these include messages with Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen, C&S Wholesale Grocers owner Richard B. Cohen, and members of Albertsons’ executive team.
The FTC asked Sankaran if he was surprised that they had only received 160 text messages from him during the discovery process in their case to stop Kroger’s acquisition of Albertsons. Sankaran responded that he felt the agency had gotten everything he had, and emphasized the steps he took to make sure everything was protected after the FTC indicated it was investigating the deal.
The FTC’s attorney noted that even using the most conservative estimates, Sankaran’s estimate of 10 text messages per day means at least 1,700 messages are missing.
Sankaran claimed that most of the text messages were mundane in nature, asking people to call him or replying to messages sent by his staff.
He said he disabled the auto-delete feature immediately after the statement and has not re-enabled it since.
