Brussels, Oct 14 - Belgian supermarket chain Delhaize and Dutch peer Ahold have suspended talks to create an aliance or possible merger, a Belgian daily said on Saturday.
Referring to industry and financial sources De Tijd said there were two explanations for the suspension of talks. First, that there had been personal friction between the negotiators and secondly that recent reports in Belgian and Dutch media had led to the talks being suspended.
One source told the paper "It's better to press the pause button until the issue has cooled down."
The paper said that the two sides had not closed the door to future talks. A Delhaize spokesman declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for Ahold said: "We don't comment on market speculation."
Ahold is the world's fourth-biggest food retail and foodservice group by sales and more than twice the size of Delhaize.
Both companies generate most of their sales in the United States and are not active in each other's smaller home markets in Europe, making them a reasonably complementary fit.
Delhaize generates about 80 percent of its sales in the United States where it operates a variety of supermarket chains, including Food Lion. It also has supermarkets in Greece, the Czech Republic, Romania and Indonesia.