The stressful conflict between the existing statutory frameworks and economic tools to assess acquisitions/ mergers and the galloping reality, riding piggyback on technology, was underlined in bold relief in the press note of Bundeskartellamt, clearing the acquisition of Kustomer by Meta, in which the president stated “it is with unease that we ultimately had to acknowledge that the effects of the acquisition would not have warranted a prohibition under existing competition law. We took account of the findings of the EU Commission’s proceeding in our assessment.” The acquisition was earlier approved, conditionally, by the European Commission at the end of January.
Kustomer is a U.S. based company which sells Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to businesses helping them communicate with their customers.
