EU conditionally OKs Meta's $1 billion Kustomer acquisition
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The EU's chief regulator has given conditional approval to Meta Platforms' (FB
+1.3%) acquisition of Kustomer, bringing a long M&A saga to a close.
The company that was then known as Facebook reached a deal valuing Kustomer, a customer-service start-up that competes with companies like Zendesk, for just over $1 billion in November 2020.
That led to heavy scrutiny in the U.S. and abroad. The European Commission launched an in-depth probe of the deal, and the FTC was reported to be looking into it last spring.
Kustomer isn't big, but it is important, the EC says. âWe must carefully review transactions that could further strengthen large players that increasingly dominate the digital economy, irrespective of the target company's size," says the EC's Margrethe Vestager. "Our decision today will ensure that innovative rivals and new entrants in the customer relationship management software market can effectively compete."
In sealing the approval, Meta has agreed to 10-year commitments to offer nondiscriminatory access to its public application programming interfaces ((APIs)) for messaging channels, and "To the extent any features or functionalities of Messenger, Instagram messaging or WhatsApp that are used by Kustomer's customers today may be improved or updated, Meta commits to also make available equivalent improvements to Kustomer's rivals and new entrants."
Approval for the deal with remedies was signaled last month.