MONTREAL • It’s no secret that Metro Inc. harbours ambitions to become a truly national grocery chain.
“Scale is everything in food retailing,” current chairman Pierre Lessard once said. “And the fastest way to get scale is by acquiring others.”
But those betting the Montreal-based grocer will announce a takeover in Western Canada in the near term and keep the country’s retail supersize party rolling may be disappointed. A transformative deal that would change the game for Metro may come, but “maybe not in the short term,” company management conceded Tuesday. In the meantime, the grocer will gradually buy back more shares and pay out more dividends.
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