Is Danone looking again at Mead Johnson? As we settled back in after Easter, a report in France suggested Danone has resurrected its interest in the infant-formula business, which has been owned since 2017 by UK consumer-goods group Reckitt Benckiser.
French current affairs publication La Lettre said Danone – home to infant-formula and baby-food brands including Aptamil and Cow & Gate – has hired investment bank Centerview Partners to weigh up its options for a business Reckitt no longer sees as central to its future.
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Danone, unsurprisingly, refused to be drawn on the report when approached by Just Food, stating it did not “comment on rumours”.
Reckitt, which describes Enfamil maker Mead Johnson as “non-core”, did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
It’s important to note this isn’t the first time Danone has been linked to Mead Johnson. Back in September 2009, the French food-and-drinks giant moved to rebuff a report it had appointed to Lazard to work on a bid for the business.
That report came just weeks before US pharma group Bristol-Myers Squibb spun off Mead Johnson as a listed company. During its life as a public business, Mead Johnson was viewed by market observers as a potential target for the likes of Danone and, five years later, it was the turn of Reuters, citing anonymous sources, to report the Activia maker had decided to make a move.
Fast-forward to early 2017 and US financial news portal Street Insider was reporting Credit Suisse was advising Nestlé on a possible bid. By the end of the year, Mead Johnson had moved to Reckitt for a cool $17.9bn.
It’s fair to say Mead Johnson has had its troubles under Reckitt’s guardianship. By October 2019, the company was cutting its group-wide sales forecast on the back of “challenging market conditions” in infant formula, especially in China. Four months later, Mead Johnson’s problems sparked a £5bn (then $6.4bn) write-down.
Reports emerged in 2022 that Reckitt was pondering Mead Johnson’s future in its portfolio and, in July 2024, the company announced a “strategic review” of the unit. The group’s most recent annual results, covering 2025, describe Mead Johnson as “non-core” (the unit’s sales inched up 0.4% on a reported basis but grew 3.8% like-for-like).
Meanwhile, for the past two years, Reckitt and Mead Johnson has faced litigation in the US over claims a premature baby died from the intestinal disease necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) after being given Enfamil Premature formula.
In March 2024, Mead Johnson was ordered by a court in Illinois to pay $60m in damages, a verdict Reckitt said it would challenge. In November last year, Mead Johnson and infant-formula rival Abbott was cleared by a court in Missouri over claims their products cause NEC.
However, Reckitt and Mead Johnson are facing two state trials – one in Missouri in June and another in Nevada in November 2027 – and a federal trial in July. The company has denied the “material allegations” of the claims.
A class-action securities fraud lawsuit was also filed in New York in June last year alleging Reckitt failed to warn investors about the risk some infants could developing NEC after consuming its cow’s milk-based formula. Reckitt says it will also “vigorously defend against these allegations”.
This is the backdrop against which industry watchers have been assessing the latest report to suggest Danone is considering a move for Mead Johnson to further expand its presence in infant formula.
“While the fit has some logic, the litigation risk, valuation uncertainty and EPS accretion remain key question marks,” Barclays analyst Warren Ackerman wrote in a note to clients.
Danone is one of the world’s largest infant-formula suppliers. The company’s infant-formula business, which also markets brands including Nutrilon and Bledina, makes up 60% of the group’s Specialized Nutrition division, which also takes in adult nutrition and medical nutrition for patients.
The Specialized Nutrition division saw its like-for-like sales grow more than 7% in 2025, with Danone CEO Antoine de Saint-Affrique citing “strong demand” for infant-milk formula and medical nutrition. Speaking to analysts in February, de Saint-Affrique said Danone’s infant-formula business saw “strong momentum” in China, and a ”remarkable performance” in India and Southeast Asia.
A move for Mead Johnson would principally bolster Danone’s infant-milk business in another part of the globe. it will be a great acquisition for Danone. “It will make a lot of sense due to the fact that it will be a good opportunity to continue building the US platform of the Danone group,” Pierre Tegner, an equity analyst covering Danone for French financial-services group Oddo, tells Just Food. “It will help Danone on to have a better balance in terms of geographical exposure between Asia/China, Europe and North America. There is a need to be a bit more balanced between these three building blocks.”
Investors have become a little wary about infant formula more broadly in the opening months of 2026 amid the international recall of products by companies including Danone over concerns about the toxin cereulide.
But Ackerman says the “underlying category outlook is still strong for Danone”, adding: “Mead is a key competitor, and an acquisition would materially strengthen Danone’s position in the US and complement its existing global footprint in Latin America and Asia Pacific.”
However, Mead Johnson’s performance under Reckitt’s ownership, the legal cloud hanging over the business in the US and, more widely, the prospect of changes to regulations governing the infant-formula sector in the country may give some investors food for thought.
“It will be a good opportunity for Danone to reinvigorate an asset that has not been very well managed,” Tegner says. “The biggest question is how much Mead Johnson has been broken because it was not a well-managed asset before Reckitt did the acquisition and since the acquisition by Reckitt ten years ago. I think the key question for Danone beyond the price and the timing [of any deal] is the quality of the asset, in terms of manufacturing, supply chain, portfolio management and brand equity.”
Ackerman adds: “Mead’s growth track record is mixed and it will require more capex given the changes in US IF regulation. Consequently, we think investors may prefer more Huel-type bolt-ons.
“We’d expect Reckitt to wait for the litigation to be resolved before moving forward, to protect valuation. Reckitt paid circa $17bn for Mead Johnson in 2017 but subsequent impairments, litigation risk and slower category growth mean expectations are now substantially lower.”
