Two of Hong Kong's biggest conglomerates — Jardines and Li Ka-shing's CK Hutchison — are in talks to combine their supermarket chains into a single dominant grocer. Jardines wants to buy CK's ParknShop and merge it with its own Wellcome brand, a deal likened to Tesco buying Sainsbury's in the UK or Walmart merging with Costco in the US.

The two chains together controlled almost 90% of Hong Kong's supermarket category in 2023, according to the US Foreign Agricultural Service citing Euromonitor. Insiders claim that, factoring in e-commerce competition and cross-border shopping into mainland China, the combined group would hold under 50% market share. Talks are not imminent and no valuation has been disclosed. In parallel, CK Hutchison is exploring an initial public offering of parent AS Watson — owner of Superdrug and The Perfume Shop in the UK — targeting up to $30bn. When CK last put ParknShop up for sale in 2013, bids only reached $3bn to $4bn.

The deal reflects Jardines' pivot toward a private-equity-style model under new CEO Lincoln Pan, formerly co-head of private equity at PAG. It also continues CK Hutchison's asset rotation, which includes the sale of UK Power Networks, the planned sale of its non-Chinese ports, and the mooted IPOs of AS Watson and its global telecoms business. Source: Financial Times, 17 April 2026, Arjun Neil Alim and Zijing Wu.