The US tech giant Meta was slapped £1.5 million fine for breaching its obligation under the terms of an earlier order issued by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) watchdog, related to its acquisition of Giphy.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has failed to give CMA advance warning of the high-level staff’s departure, something it was obliged to do in line with the initial enforcement order (IEO) the CMA issued Meta in June 2020, when it started its investigation into Meta’s $400 million purchase of GIF platform Giphy.
The United Kingdom’s competition watchdog scrutinized Facebook’s acquisition of popular GIF website for a possible reduction of competition, and part of the IEO was demanding that Meta informs the CMA of any material changes to the business.
Three US employees of the key staff noted on the list that Meta supplied the CMA with, left the company and their roles were reallocated. Since changes to key staff are considered to fall under ‘material changes’, Meta was expected to seek CMA’s consent of any rehiring or redistribution of responsibilities in advance, something that it failed to do.
The US tech company, as CMA claims, also received a £500,000 penalty for having changed its chief compliance officer twice without prior consent and failed to inform them of staff changes multiple times throughout 2021.
The CMA-issued fine rounds up the difficult week for Meta, which suffered a historic single-day loss on Wednesday.
Meta was already slapped with a £50.5 million fine in October for a violation that had fundamentally undermined CMA’s ability to prevent, monitor, and put right any issues. Namely, the company breached the IEO by limiting the scope of the compliance reports it was required to publish as part of it.
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