Facebook slapped $122M fine, thanks to WhatsApp
paris/brussels/luxembourg — Facebook was fined €110 million ($122 million) by the European Union for misleading regulators during a 2014 review of the WhatsApp messaging service takeover on the same day the EU threatened to heavily penalise Patrick Drahi’s Altice for implementing for a second time a deal before getting regulatory clearance.
The European Commission won’t overturn approval for the $22 billion WhatsApp purchase as “the incorrect or misleading information provided by Facebook did not have an impact on the outcome of the clearance decision”, the regulator said Thursday in an e-mailed statement.
The Facebook fine “sends a clear signal to companies that they must comply with all aspects of EU merger rules, including the obligation to provide correct information,” EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. She added in a Bucharest speech that Facebook’s cooperation with EU officials earned it a lower fine.
Altice, which was already fined €80 million last year in France for jumping the gun in its takeover of French phone carrier SFR Group, was sent a statement of objections by the EU accusing it of similar misdeeds in relation to the acquisition of telecommunication operator PT Portugal.
The commission suspects Altice may have even implemented the merger prior to its notification to the EU in some instances. Drahi’s company risks a fine of as much as 10 percent of Altice’s annual worldwide sales but the EU’s conditional clearance of the PT Portugal deal in 2015 won’t be affected.
The commission said it considers that the purchase agreement between the two companies put Altice in a position to exercise decisive influence over PT Portugal before notification or clearance of the transaction, and that in certain instances Altice actually exercised decisive influence over PT Portugal.
Altice doesn’t agree with the commission’s preliminary conclusions and will submit a full response to the EU, the company said in statement. — Bloomberg