European Union: Issued approval on Meta's waiver request in acquisition of Kustomer

On 13 November 2023, the European Commission waived commitments made by Meta to obtain approval for its acquisition of Kustomer. After the Commission conditionally approved the transaction in January 2022, Meta requested a waiver of the commitments on 19 September 2023 in light of the spinout of Kostumer, where Meta holds only a minority non-controlling stake. The waivers included maintaining access to its publicly available business-to-consumer messaging application programming interfaces (API) and (ensuring the functional parity of core API functionalities available to Kustomer. The Commission approved Meta’s request, citing Meta’s lack of incentive to foreclose on Kostumer’s rivals.