May 4 (Reuters) - Empire Company Ltd EMPa.TO
* Empire launches major transformation initiative to simplify its business, unlock national scale and significantly reduce costs
* Company to deliver $500 million in annualized savings by 2020
* Empire company - annualized cost savings will come from collapsing multiple, independent regions into largely national, functionally-led structure
* Initial results from transformational initiative are not expected to be reflected until end of calendar 2017
* Empire company - initial one-time costs will begin to be expensed in q4 of fiscal 2017 with majority of costs expensed in first half of fiscal 2018 Source text for Eikon: ID:nCNWZ1WLCa Further company coverage: EMPa.TO