Ooh the delicious irony of it:
BBC 22 December 2000:
Supermarket chain Sainsbury's has sold its Homebase DIY chain in a two-fold deal worth £969m. The arrangement will see its chain of stores sold to venture capitalist Schroder Ventures for £750m.
A further 28 sites, which were intended to house new Homebase stores, are being sold to Kingfisher, owner of DIY rival B&Q, for £219m...
Guardian 5 January 2016:
Sainsbury’s has made a £1bn move to buy Home Retail Group, the owner of Argos and Homebase, as it seeks to strengthen its business against the rise of the discounters and Amazon.
The supermarket group said it had made an approach to Home Retail in November, but its proposal was rejected last month...
For more of this pointless hilarity, see BT trying to buy EE. EE is basically old mmO2, which was demerged from BT in 2001, which was renamed O2, which then got renamed EE (give or take a bit).