Loblaw will pay $252.2 million (including $96 million it’s already paid) and its parent company George Weston will pay $247.5 million to end class-action lawsuits targeting the companies over a conspiracy to raise the price of grocery-store bread from 2001 to 2015. The deal is subject to court approval. (The Logic)
Talking point: George Weston Ltd. is descended from the commercial bakery that made the Weston family fortune; Galen G. Weston is chair of both it and Loblaw. “This behaviour should never have happened,” he said in a news release, while taking credit for reporting the companies’ conduct and accusing other big chains of being in on it, too. The Loblaw companies received immunity from prosecution, while Canada Bread, another party to the scheme, pleaded guilty and paid a $50-million fine. The class-action suit continues against other retailers, including Walmart, Sobeys and Metro—which has sued the Loblaw companies for allegedly “falsely implicating Metro in a bread price-fixing conspiracy in which Metro had no involvement.”