Cerberus Capital Management, a big private equity firm, has long attracted controversy. In 2007, it took over Chrysler, but after two years of Cerberus ownership, the company needed a government bailout to stay in business. It spent years buying up companies that made guns — one of which was used by Adam Lanza in 2012 to kill 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Now the firm, which has some $60 billion in assets, is trying to pull off a deal that is expected to face intense scrutiny from antitrust regulators. Cerberus is the largest investor in Albertsons, the country’s second-largest supermarket chain by revenue. In October, Kroger, which is nearly twice the size of Albertsons, announced it was going to buy its smaller rival for $24.6 billion. If the deal were to go through without any government-mandated divestitures, the combined company would own some 5,000 stores, making it by far the dominant grocery chain in the country. The two companies hope to complete the deal in early 2024, according to federal filings.

…

“In my opinion, the $4 billion special dividend is straightforward corporate raiding,” Sarah Miller, the founder of the American Economic Liberties Project, wrote in an email. Karl Racine, the attorney general of Washington, D.C., noting that the dividend was 57 times as much as any previous Albertsons’s dividend, called it “a cash grab.” He and others also pointed out that Albertsons did not have $4 billion in hand; it would have to borrow $1.5 billion, adding to its nearly $7.5 billion debt load.

…