Sobeys

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway on Monday announced the appointment of Peter Bocian as its new executive vice president and CFO. Bocian, 58, will oversee the company's financial functions including accounting, tax, audit, treasury, investor relations, planning and business development. He will report directly to Robert Edwards, Safeway's president, and will assume his new responsibilities on Feb. 19.

Pleasanton, Calif. -- Safeway Inc. announced Monday that it has named Peter J. Bocian as EVP and CFO, effective Feb. 19.

Bocian, who will report to Safeway president Robert Edwards, spent a year with Starbucks as the coffee purveyor’s CFO and chief administrative officer. Most recently, he was head of real estate finance for JP Morgan Chase.

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway is offering its customers the ability to earn reward points redeemable at participating Exxon or Mobil gas stations.

"Safeway listens to its shoppers, and we understand the importance of stretching grocery dollars," said Mir Aamir, president of customer loyalty and digital technologies at Safeway. "By teaming up with ExxonMobil, we're able to thank our customers with a loyalty program that makes two frequent and critical purchases lead to real savings."

New York -- Shares of Safeway Inc. shares rose as much as 9% on Wednesday on rumors of increased buyout interest for its Canada operations by Canadian grocer Metro Inc. and Loblaw Companies Ltd.

On Tuesday, Metro announced it was selling off nearly half its stake in Couche-Tard Inc. for $482 million.

In December, Loblaw announced plans to spin off the vast majority of its property assets into a real estate investment trust.

In December, the retailers that increased their page counts were balanced out by those that decreased their page counts. However, of those retailers that did reduce their page counts, only two also reduced the number of inserts distributed by more than 2%. 

Keeping with their November strategy, Walmart continued its aggressive promotions this month, and has shown a significant increase in both drop of flyer and pages per flyer. They showed the highest growth compared to other advertisers in page counts, and the second highest growth in number of flyers.

Top food executives at Walmart are presumably in the crosshairs of Safeway recruiters now that longtime chairman and CEO Steve Burd has announced his retirement.

Nineteen of the nation’s leading retail and CPG companies received perfect scores on the 2013 Corporate Equality Index compiled by the Human Rights Campaign.

The Human Rights Campaign released its 2013 Corporate Equality Index, which gives companies ratings of up to 100% based on their policies regarding LGBT employees and also released a buyer's guide for LGBT consumers. According to the equality advocacy group, a total of 1,848 companies were invited to submit applications, of those 530 actually did so and of those 252 received scores of 100%.

New York -- The hunt is on for a new chief executive at Safeway following the resignation of longtime chairman and CEO Steve Burd.

Burd, 62, is scheduled to retire at the company’s annual stockholders meeting on May 14 and will aid in the search of his successor that is said to include internal and external candidates. Burd joined Safeway in October 1992 as president and was appointed CEO in May of the following year.

Promotional activity among the nation’s leading retailers declined during November aside from several notable exceptions. There was a flurry of intense promotional activity around Thanksgiving weekend, as always, but for the months as a whole the number of inserts distributed by retailers declined 7% and the number of pages declined by 5%.

The overall trend has been similar to what we saw last month with a marginal decrease in the number of circulars, while increases were seen in page counts per market. Average pages per market saw 10% increase this year October when compared with the same month last year.