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EU fines Facebook £94m for lying in takeover bid

FACEBOOK was fined an “unprecedented” £94.5 million yesterday after an EU watchdog ruled that it had given misleading information in its £15.3 billion takeover of WhatsApp.

The European Commission said that the US social network had falsely claimed that it was unable to combine user data between the two companies’ accounts.

“Contrary to Facebook’s statements in the 2014 merger review process, the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook and WhatsApp users’ identities already existed in 2014, and Facebook staff were aware of such a possibility,” the commission said.

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