• San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, April 24, 2012 10:32 AM

The Street is battering Safeway. The company's stock fell last month after a Credit Suisse analyst said its pension accounts were underfunded to the tune of $7 billion. Safeway disputed the figure and said the situation was "a manageable issue, being handled well by all parties involved."

Last week, there were rumors of a takeover when options traders suddenly began bidding up the price on three-month contracts. This week Safeway reports its first-quarter 2012 earnings. At the same time, union negotiations, which have been on and off since October, are supposed to go into high gear, with the two sides still far apart. "It's a brutal time, for everyone involved," said Garrick Brown, retail research director at Terranomics, a commercial real estate brokerage in Sacramento.

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