Mattress Firm

Acquired by Tempur Sealy International in February 2025 for $4 billion. The FTC voted 5-0 (bipartisan) in July 2024 to block the merger and filed for preliminary injunction in federal court. Judge Charles Eskridge of the Southern District of Texas denied the injunction in January 2025 in a 115-page opinion, explicitly accepting the FTC's finding that the combined firm would have a profit-aligned incentive to exclude rivals from Mattress Firm's showroom floor but ruling the foreclosure share too low to bar the merger. As a remedy, Tempur Sealy committed to reserve 25% of Mattress Firm's floor space for third-party brands through 2030. Previously owned by Steinhoff International (acquired 2016 for $3.8B), the South African conglomerate that became the subject of the largest accounting fraud in South African history ($7.4B in fictitious transactions 2009-2017). Mattress Firm filed Chapter 11 in October 2018 amid Steinhoff's collapse and an internal real-estate kickback scheme that the company itself characterized in court filings as a "massive, multi-year fraud, bribery, and kickback scheme."

Vertical integration of the country's largest mattress manufacturer with the country's largest mattress retailer. Court-documented FTC finding that this structure incentivizes excluding competitors. 75% of Mattress Firm's floor space is contractually permitted to be Tempur Sealy products through 2030, and the 25% third-party commitment expires in 2030. Two decades of fraud-adjacent ownership history (Steinhoff parent, internal kickback scheme).