Facebook fined for misleading regulators

Facebook was fined €110m by the EU 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. A report on the Fin24 site notes that the European Commission won’t overturn approval for the $22bn WhatsApp purchase as ‘the incorrect or misleading information provided by Facebook did not have an impact on the outcome of the clearance decision’. 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 is quoted in the report as saying. She added that Facebook’s cooperation with EU officials earned it a lower fine. The report notes that Altice, which was already fined €80m 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.