Facebook’s Stealth M&A Puts Focus on Deals Under Antitrust Radar
- Mergers that raise competition concerns are going unreported
- Findings complicate Biden plan to boost antitrust enforcement
Photographer: Uli Deck/picture alliance/Getty Images
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Last year, Facebook Inc. did something U.S. technology giants have done countless times before: It bought a smaller company and closed the deal without notifying competition regulators.
But this transaction -- the $400 million acquisition of image library Giphy Inc. -- was particularly bold. At the time, Facebook was under investigation by antitrust enforcers for what the government says was an illegal practice of buying companies in order to eliminate them as potential threats to its monopoly power.