Asda Stores Ltd. trading as Asda, is a British supermarket retailer, headquartered in Leeds, West Yorkshire. The company was founded in 1949 when the supermarket owning Asquith family merged with the Associated Dairies company of Yorkshire. It expanded into the south of England during the 1970s and 1980s, and acquired Allied Carpets, 61 large Gateway Supermarkets and other businesses, such as MFI, then sold off its acquisitions during the 1990s to concentrate on the supermarkets. It became a subsidiary of the American retail giant Walmart after a £6.7 billion takeover in July 1999, and was the second-largest supermarket chain in Britain between 2003 and 2014 by market share, and is currently third behind Tesco and Sainsbury's.Besides its core supermarkets, the company also offers a number of other services, including financial services and a mobile phone provider that uses the existing EE network. Asda's marketing promotions are usually based solely on price, and since 2015, like its parent company, Walmart, Asda has promoted itself under the slogan Save Money. Live Better. Since 1987, Asda has also had its property development subsidiary, McLagan Investments Ltd, which is based at the main Leeds head office site. The company is responsible for acquiring land for new Asda store developments, along with the relevant planning applications that are submitted to local councils, and the potential acquisition of any retail stores or developments placed for sale on the open market by any of its main competitors. As a wholly owned division of Walmart, Asda is not required to declare quarterly or half-yearly earnings, but it submits full accounts to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission each November. Despite being a subsidiary of Walmart, the company has more autonomy than any of the other supermarket chains within the Walmart International division, and has retained its own British management team and board since the 1999 takeover. As of April 2018, Sainsbury's and Asda are in talks of merging. Such a merger would give the combined supermarkets an estimated 30% share of the UK grocery market. Any merger proposal resulting from these talks would be subject to investigation by the UK regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, before being allowed to take place.
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