Advocates Urge FTC to Investigate Energizer-Rayovac Merger Amid Growing Outsourcing Concerns
Washington, D.C. — Amid reports of price increases and job outsourcing, the American Economic Liberties Project and nine other organizations — representing advocates in the antimonopoly, consumer protection, corporate accountability, and economic justice spaces — today sent a letter urging the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into Energizer’s 2018 acquisition of Rayovac and evaluate whether a divestiture is needed.
“In acquiring Rayovac, Energizer gained extreme power in the consumer battery market — power it’s abused to price-gouge consumers and lay off hard-working, unionized Americans, all as it prepares to outsource production,” said Morgan Harper, Director of Policy & Advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project. “With new leadership at the FTC, we urge the agency to open an investigation into this 2018 deal and take steps to remedy the harms caused by this merger, including a potential divestiture of the Rayovac division.”
After acquiring Rayovac in 2018, Energizer gained control of 85% of the global battery market. In the United States, it seriously competes only with Duracell, controlling 40% of the U.S. market. When the merger was proposed, the European Commission demanded divestitures, but the FTC waved the deal through in 2018 without further investigation, despite the obvious risks to competition.
With this market dominance, Energizer has increased prices across its entire battery portfolio and vowed to cut jobs in its US facilities. Energizer recently informed employees of plans to close all its Wisconsin operations — the exact manufacturing division with a unionized workforce that Energizer acquired from Spectrum in 2018 — with plans to shift production abroad to a non-unionized U.S. facility.
Economic Liberties and a coalition of advocates are urging the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into the merger review process that led to the approval of this deal, take steps to remedy the harms of the merger, and open a select review of other mergers in recent decades — particularly where predictable harms to labor became apparent after the deal closed. Senator Tammy Baldwin recently echoed these concerns and urged the agency to investigate the deal given its effect on Wisconsin jobs.
Read the full letter to the Federal Trade Commission here.
Learn more about Economic Liberties here.
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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.