LONDON, ENGLAND - Reports have surfaced this weekend claiming that Seattle-based online retail titan Amazon made an unsuccessful bid on upscale U.K. supermarket Waitrose.
Citing unnamed source, the Sunday Times claimed that Amazon’s VP of Special Projects Ajay Kavan met with an unidentified Director of Waitrose parent company John Lewis Partnership.
Parties from both companies, reportedly, had a series of “enormously informal” discussions in November of last year, but John Lewis Partnership Chairman Charlie Mayfield reportedly refused to take negotiations forward.
Mayfield denied the reports that broke late last week, saying: “These times are ripe for speculation, but there has been no approach to the Partnership by Amazon regarding Waitrose and nor would I expect there to be.”
News of the rebuffed offer surfaced just a week after Amazon’s largest U.S. competitor agreed to sell its U.K. banner Asda to Sainsbury. The approximately 350-store strong Waitrose would be a fitting U.K. foothold for Amazon were the e-tailer looking to apply the same approach it took in acquiring Whole Foods in the U.S., mutatis mutandis, to the European market.
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