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Supply-chain woes could spawn some unlikely alliances

A Walmart-Home Depot Merger Makes Shiploads of Sense — Tara Lachapelle

Should Walmart Inc. merge with Home Depot Inc.? There may be a container ship worth of reasons for them to consider it.

Walmart and Home Depot are among U.S. retailers that have grown so frustrated with the limited space on container ships and rising cost of ocean shipping that they've begun chartering their own vessels to speed the journey from factories on one side of the world to consumers on the other. Costco Wholesale Corp. also resorted to this option recently rather than risk having key items out of stock heading into the holidays.

Cutting down on costs to bolster profitability is one of the chief reasons companies pursue mergers and acquisitions, and so it's quite possible that sustained supply-chain bottlenecks will spur some previously unfathomable unions.

Read the whole thing.

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This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion published this week based on web readership.

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