Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC (RBGLY) Faces Largest Opioid Settlement in History

According to the complaint against the company for alleged violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 between July 28, 2014 and April 9, 2019, in 2009, Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC (RBGLY), an opioid treatment division of Reckitt, initiated a massive campaign based on false representations that touted its Suboxone film as "better from a child safety point of view" and as "less divertable and abusable" in an attempt to switch consumers away from its Suboxone tablet, which experienced greater market competition. These statements were materially false and, in fact, Reckitt's own internal analysis showed that Suboxone film was actually more frequently abused or involved in child exposures. Despite these facts, the statements remained uncorrected throughout the relevant period and artificially inflated Reckitt's revenue to over $840 million annually. Then, from July 2017 - February 2018, Reckitt announced it had recorded charges totaling £614 million in relation to a DOJ investigation of its Reckitt Pharma operations. On this news, the price of Reckitt ADSs dropped more than 15%. The truth was finally revealed on April 9, 2019, when the DOJ filed a criminal indictment against Reckitt Pharma (now Indivior) for a multi-billion-dollar scheme to defraud the public through the marketing and sale of Suboxone Film.  On this news, the price of Reckitt ADSs declined an addition 6%.  Reckitt Pharma settled the federal investigation for $1.4 billion, which, at the time, was the "largest opioid settlement in US history."

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