European Commission to look at user data in acquisitions

The European Commission plans to look more closely at mergers and acquisitions if the companies involved have collected a lot of personal data. That is what the responsible European Commissioner says. Until now, turnover has mainly been used as an indicator of how strict takeovers are assessed.

If a company has a lot of data, but has not yet found a way to make a lot of money with it, then that acquisition deserves a stricter assessment, says European Commissioner Margarethe Vestager, according to Bloomberg news agency. The comment comes a few weeks after Vestager announced it would ask Facebook ‘follow-up questions’ about the WhatsApp acquisition several years ago. The questions follow now that WhatsApp has said it will share more data with the parent company.

Until now, the European Commission mainly looked at a company’s turnover to see how strict an acquisition should be assessed and not at data. Having privacy-sensitive data is already a factor in takeovers. For example, the European Commission is looking at the acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft because of the turnover of both companies and the large amount of user data.

The European Commission can approve or block takeovers. It allows many takeovers to go ahead, but it also happens that it imposes strict conditions, for example not to jeopardize competition. Last year, some providers therefore canceled a proposed merger.