Reckitt

On 27 August 2011, Reckitt recalled all remaining stock of its major analgesic product, Nurofen Plus, after packs were found to contain an antipsychotic drug. It turned out that this was the work of a codeine addict who had been stealing the pills and replacing them with their antipsychotic medication.

In November 2012, Reckitt acquired Schiff Nutrition, a Salt Lake City-based manufacturer of vitamins and nutritional supplements including Digestive Advantage, MegaRed, Airborne, and Move Free, for US$1.4 billion (£877 million). In December 2014, Reckitt spun off its speciality pharmaceuticals business, which produces Suboxone (an opioid withdrawal medication), into a separate company named Indivior.

In 2014, Reckitt Benckiser dropped its full name in favour of the RB brand. According to Kapoor, the old name was "a bit of a mouthful" and the name change would make life easier.'

In February 2017, the company bid $16.7 billion for the American infant formula maker Mead Johnson. In February 2017, Reckitt Benckiser announced it had bought Mead Johnson for $16.6 billion. To effect the transaction, Reckitt Benckiser incorporated a subsidiary in Delaware into which Mead Johnson Nutrition would be transferred, with Mead Johnson Nutrition being the sole surviving entity at completion. Following the acquisition of Mead Johnson, Reckitt Benckiser split its business into two divisions: consumer healthcare, and home and hygiene. While some expert analysts viewed this move as a precursor to a possible sale of the home division, Kapoor said that it was only to improve the performance of each of the divisions.

In July 2017, McCormick acquired Reckitt's food brands, including French's Mustard & Frank's RedHot, for $4.2 billion, subject to regulatory approval.

Kapoor retired in September 2019 and was replaced by Laxman Narasimhan, PepsiCo's global chief commercial officer. Narasimhan developed a turnaround strategy designed to rejuvenate the company "following a series of missteps and lacklustre growth that marked the final years of his predecessor".

In March 2021, the company rebranded from RB to Reckitt - including a new logo and visual identity as a next step in delivering on the strategic purpose of the company.

On 1 September 2022, Reckitt announced that Narasimhan had chosen to resign as CEO, citing "personal and family reasons", and would relinquish his position at the end of the month. It was also revealed that he is expected to become the next CEO of Starbucks. Narasimhan's unexpected departure "came as an unwelcome shock to shareholders", with the company's share price falling by "more than 5 per cent in early trading [...] before recovering somewhat to 4.5 per cent below their opening price" on the day of the announcement.

Senior Independent Director Nicandro Durante was appointed to serve as CEO on an "interim" basis "while the board considers a longer-term replacement".

In the end, it resulted in the exposure of dozens of other humidifier disinfectant products by dozens of other companies with PHMG, chloromethylchloroisothiazolinone (CMIT), methylisothiazolinone (MIT) and oligo(2-(2-ethoxy)-ethoxyethyl)guanidinium-chloride (PGH), and the South Korean government officially recognized 1,814 dead and 7,837 injured victims, however, according to Korea national apparatus, Social Disasters Commission, including unreported cases, estimated 20,366 deaths, 950,000 health damages, and 8,940,000 exposures occurred between 1994 and 2011 due to PHMG only, with Reckitt Benckiser's humidifier disinfectant product, Oxy Ssak Ssak (옥시싹싹) being the humidifier disinfectant product with the largest amount of victims with 221 confirmed deaths and 300 confirmed health damages.

Cillit Bang viral marketing controversy

Cillit Bang television advertisements have been presented by "Barry Scott", a brashly enthusiastic character played by Neil Burgess, who claims that Cillit Bang can remove limescale, rust and ground-in dirt. In one advert, he places a copper English one penny coin in Cillit Bang to demonstrate the product's cleaning ability to remove staining. International versions of the advert use different presenters, known as Martin Grellis in Australia and New Zealand, and Dan Dolan in North America, although some spots feature Neil Burgess as Barry Scott. The North American versions of the advertisement use the appropriate one-cent coin (a Lincoln cent in the United States, a 1953–1964 one cent coin in Canada). The company claimed that the coin would be clean in 15 seconds: however the Advertising Standards Agency said the claim was misleading.

In 2005 advertising agency Cohn & Wolfe was contracted by Reckitt to operate a blog as the fictional character Barry Scott as a viral marketing platform. In October of that year blogger Tom Coates wrote an emotional post to his own blog about his long-estranged father. Among the expressions of condolences and sympathy in the post's comment section was one from a user identifying themselves as Barry Scott, with a link back to the Cohn & Wolfe's in-character blog as Barry Scott. Offended by the apparent use of his blog comments on such a personal post as a spam advertising venue, Coates traced the comment's originating IP address through addresses owned by Young & Rubicam and back to Reckitt. Reckitt initially denied responsibility for the message but later wrote Coates an apology acknowledging the message's inappropriateness, and Cohn & Wolfe issued a statement of remorse for their misuse of the "experimental" blog which they then ceased operating.

The controversy and its fallout led to further discussions among the blogger community as well as the advertising industry on the ethical issues surrounding blogs being "operated" by fictional characters for the purposes of advertising without being clearly labeled as such, and the extent to which those blogs should be allowed to participate in the greater blogosphere.

The Barry Scott adverts were parodied by Peter Serafinowicz on The Peter Serafinowicz Show. In the parodies, the host "Derek Baum" (played by Serafinowicz) markets a product called Kitchen Gun, which is a firearm that the host uses to blast away at kitchen surfaces and appliances, cleaning and damaging them at the same time, and Toilet Grenade, a hand grenade covered in white paint that demolishes the toilet bowl to eliminate limescale and germs.

Anti-competitive behaviour

In 2008, the BBC's Newsnight accused Reckitt Benckiser of attempting to delay the introduction of a competitive, generic version of one of its most popular products, Gaviscon, a treatment for heartburn and gastroesophageal reflux disease. In his introduction, reporter Martin Shankleman said:

Gaviscon is hailed as a power brand by its owners, Reckitt Benckiser... Reckitt Benckiser likes to claim that the profits flow from their expertise in marketing. But we know that there's another way in which they've been coining it in—by ripping-off the NHS, as a whistle-blower has told us. The "whistle-blower" was shown in silhouette, and his words were spoken by an actor: "Reckitt's cheated the National Health Service. It could have saved the NHS millions of pounds. But not just the NHS, patients, doctors—they've cheated health professionals. I felt it had to be exposed". He continued, "Newsnight claimed that Reckitt had a "secret plan to ensure that it kept its stranglehold" after the Gaviscon patent expired in 1999, and that Newsnight had seen the plan. The Department of Health asked Newsnight to hand its documents to the NHS counter-fraud service.

The investigation was widely reported in the British press. The Guardian quoted a leaked memo in which the product's manager explained that the company could use "the rationale of health and safety" to design a switched product to "muddy the waters". The newspaper quoted Reckitt as stating that the leaked memos were "inappropriate and did not reflect Reckitt's eventual actions".

The Independent quoted Warwick Smith, director of the British Generic Manufacturers Association: "The sort of evergreening alleged by Newsnight can cost the NHS tens of millions of pounds with no patient benefit." It also quoted a statement issued by the company: "...RB is a responsible company and we have therefore instigated an immediate internal investigation and will take action. However, we do not accept much of what has been alleged."

The Times noted that "Although Gaviscon has been out of patent for almost ten years, no other manufacturer has developed a cheap generic version. Such a drug could have saved the NHS up to £40 million." It stated that the Office of Fair Trading was expected to examine whether Reckitt had acted illegally. It also printed verbatim extracts from several of the leaked memos.

In response to the Newsnight report and the reports in the press, Reckitt issued a statement that began:

We are shocked by the allegations made as Reckitt Benckiser is a responsible company in the way it conducts its business.

Nevertheless, we are deeply concerned by the inappropriate sentiment expressed in some of the historic internal correspondence reported. We take this very seriously and have instigated an immediate internal investigation, and will take action. We also refute much of what has been reported which implies a power and influence we simply do not possess.

The company has never objected to a monograph driven generic name being published. The timetable of which is not, and never has been, within our control a monograph/generic name could have been published at any time by the regulators without reference to any third party.

The company made appropriate challenges where it felt it was justified in order to ensure patients are prescribed the right treatment. These were within the law and relevant regulations. We stress that the regulators only take a comment into account when it is valid.

On 15 October 2010, Reckitt was fined £10.2 million by the Office of Fair Trading after the company admitted anti-competitive behaviour.

In 2014, the Autorité de la concurrence in France found that Reckitt had colluded with 12 other multinational companies (Colgate-Palmolive, Henkel, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Sara Lee, SC Johnson, Bolton Solitaire, Laboratoires Vendôme, Gillette, L'Oréal, Beiersdorf and Vania) to fix the prices of popular personal hygiene products; the fine of around €950 million was the largest ever imposed by the agency.

In 2015, Reckitt created controversy when it emerged that seemingly different versions of their product Nurofen marketed to treat specific pains, such as migraine, were all identical to the standard product despite costing twice as much. The product was withdrawn from sale in Australia for misleading consumers. The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) took the matter to court and in December 2016, Reckitt was fined A$6 million.

Legal challenges to rodenticide regulations

In 2008, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a decision to remove second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides from store shelves, leaving the products available for purchase only by US licensed applicators. The ruling was slated to go into effect in 2011 allowing poison companies time to adjust to the new law. EPA's decision was based on tens of thousands of reports of pet, wildlife and child poisonings that resulted annually from rat poisons in the US alone. In 2011, Reckitt Benckiser makers of d-CON products initiated a legal challenge to the EPA expected to take several years to resolve. Early in 2014, California State Department of Pesticide Regulation ruled that anticoagulant rat poison sales would be restricted beginning on 1 July 2014. Reckitt filed suit in San Diego County Superior Court in April 2014 to block the decision, but eventually reached an agreement with the EPA to phase out the products in June 2014; production of the banned products stopped on 31 December 2014, with distribution to retailers ceased on 31 March 2015, although retailers will be allowed to keep the banned products in stock until they are all sold out.

Palm oil procurement

According to a 2016 Amnesty International report, Reckitt Benckiser is one of several major consumer goods companies that purchase palm oil from Wilmar International, the world's largest palm oil refiner. Amnesty's investigation revealed that Wilmar profits from child labour and forced labour and exposes workers to toxic banned chemicals.

Opioid marketing

In 2019, Reckitt paid a $1.4bn fine for claiming opioid medication Suboxone Film was "safer... even though such claims have never been established."

Controversy regarding operations in Russia

Reckitt Benckiser has faced criticism for continuing its operations in Russia despite the invasion of Ukraine and widespread international sanctions. In April 2022, the company announced plans to transfer ownership of its Russian business to a third party or local employees but did not complete the process as of 2024. Trading data reveals that Reckitt Benckiser continues to export products to Russia, raising concerns about its commitment to disengaging from the market. While the company has frozen capital investments, advertising, sponsorships, and promotions in Russia, its ongoing presence has drawn scrutiny in light of Russia's continued aggression and violations of international law.