Facebook fined £50million by UK watchdog – but can pay it off in just 15 HOURS

FACEBOOK has been fined £50.5million ($69.5million) for breaking UK rules when buying Giphy.

The Californian tech giant has been publicly reprimanded by the Competition & Markets Authority – just 15 hours’ worth of Facebook profits.

The CMA hinted that Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook thought it was ‘above the law’

According to the CMA, Facebook breached an order imposed by the CMA.

This order prevents companies from quietly merging while an acquisition is being reviewed.

An Initial Enforcement Order was placed on Facebook in June 2020, relating to its purchase of GIF app Giphy.

But the CMA says Facebook breached this order.

“Initial enforcement orders are a key part of the UK’s voluntary merger control regime,” said the CMA’s Joel Bamford.

“We warned Facebook that its refusal to provide us with important information was a breach of the order but, even after losing its appeal in two separate courts, Facebook continued to disregard its legal obligations.

“This should serve as a warning to any company that thinks it is above the law.”

According to the CMA, Facebook was asked to regularly outline its compliance with the order.

But Facebook is said to have “significantly limited the scope of those updates”.

The CMA says it gave Facebook repeated warnings, and is being fined £50million as a result.

In a damning statement, the CMA called it a “major breach”.

And the CMA said Facebook’s behaviour “fundamentally undermined [the CMA’s] ability to prevent, monitor and put right any issues”.

Facebook was also fined a further £500,000 for changing its Chief Compliance Officer twice “without seeking consent first”.

Small change

The fine is significantly lower than the maximum levy of 5% of Facebook’s revenue, which would have amounted to billions of pounds.

In any case, £50.5million is pocket change to a tech titan like Facebook.

The sum equates to $69.5million in US dollars – a fraction of the company’s $958.5billion stock market value.

Earlier this year, The Sun revealed how Facebook was making $110million a day in profit.

In July the company reported its profit doubled in the recent ended quarter, jumping to $10.4billion on revenue of $29billion.

That’s equivalent to about $76,000 per minute – meaning this new fine will take about 15 hours to pay off.

It’s also enough to buy 12 of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s glitzy Lake Taho mega-mansions every week.

Zuck snapped up the sprawling lakeside compound complete with 10 acres of land, 15 bedrooms and multiple piers for $60million back in 2019.

Facebook said in its second quarter report that profit saw a 56 per cent increase from last year, mainly from a jump in ad revenues.

However, the company warned of cooler growth in the months ahead in an update which sent its shares sinking.

The number of people using the social network monthly climbed to 2.9billion, a year-over-year gain of seven per cent.

And some 3.5 billion people used at least one of the company’s apps including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.

We’ve asked Facebook for comment and will update this story with any response.

Facebook makes enough cash to buy 12 of its CEO’s glitzy Lake Taho mega-mansions every weekRobbReport

More to come…

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