Facebook asks EU antitrust regulators to examine WhatsApp deal

Social network Facebook had asked EU antitrust regulators to examine its $19-billion takeover of mobile messaging service WhatsApp, Reuters reported Wednesday quoting a person with direct knowledge of the matter (See: Facebook to buy smartphone-messaging app WhatsApp for a staggering $16 bn).

Companies that required merger approvals from several national regulators in Europe, typically preferred to take their case to the EC to avoid multiple reviews.

The deal was cleared by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last month.

The commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a letter to the two companies on 10 April, said WhatsApp would need to adhere to its current privacy practices following the merger, including a promise not to use WhatsApp users' personal data for targeted ads. Reuters said while Facebook was not immediately available for comment, a EU commission spokeswoman declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported if a company faced a merger review in three EU countries, it could ask the Brussels-based commission to handle the case.

Bloomberg quoted Matthew Hall, a lawyer at McGuire Woods LLP in Brussels, who was not involved with the case, as saying in an email, ''Depending on where Facebook would have had to file, it may feel safer with dealing with the sophisticated, unbiased'' commission merger people.

The cash-and-stock acquisition would be the biggest by the social network, as also the most expensive for an internet company in over a decade. The merger had also triggered concerns about privacy as data-protection regulators questioned how the mobile-messaging startup's client data would be used.