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Lancashire’s Issa brothers are close to merging Asda and EG petrol forecourts in £12bn deal which union says would be ‘deeply irresponsible’.

A union representing workers at Asda has said a potential merger of the supermarket with EG Group’s UK petrol stations could risk jobs, food supplies and monopolise petrol stations across the UK. But the Issa Brothers and their private equity backers at TDR Capital are believed to be pushing ahead with the plans to help them secure a better refinancing deal.

However, nothing has been confirmed from either company, with both declining to comment on Thursday, or their owners. The GMB Union wrote to Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch urging her to call in the competition regulator to investigate the possible multibillion pound deal.

GMB said allowing the merger to go ahead would be “deeply irresponsible” and risks posing a “potential threat to the critical and essential access to our food supply system, to fuel prices, and risks the jobs of over 100,000 employees”. GMB represents retail and distribution workers across the “big four” supermarket chain, which hires more than 145,000 staff. According to reports, Asda and the UK division of EG Group, which have the same owners, could be combined in a bid to cut debts hampering the forecourt empire.

Born in Blackburn, Mohsin and Zuber Issa began their careers working in their father’s local petrol station, They now own EG group and Asda.

Lancashire billionaires splash £600m to snap up these forecourt shops

EG Group, one of the world’s biggest petrol station businesses, is due to refinance its £7bn debt pile by 2025, at a time when interest rates have risen sharply. The concerns are that a merger could laden Asda with more debt, on top of the £4.7bn net debt it reportedly already has.

“Reckless financial engineering that risks these jobs must be subject to proper scrutiny and the owners held accountable for decisions which may impact this,” the letter read, signed by GMB’s national officer Nadine Houghton. GMB said loading more debt on to one of the UK’s biggest supermarkets poses a risk to the nation’s food supply.

Merging the two businesses would result in an empire owning more than 700 petrol stations across the UK, which could create a monopoly and reduce competition on fuel prices, the union added. “A ‘super retailer’ with such a heavy concentration of petrol forecourts could have a chilling effect on competition across the UK petrol market,” Ms Houghton said.

Lancashire Issa brothers rumored to merge companies in a bid to ‘cut debts’