Spooked by Zuckerberg's acquisition, FTC, the US antitrust agency, is suing Facebook parent company Meta

Beijing, September 3 (Xinhua) the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US antitrust regulator, is suing Facebook parent company Meta to prevent it from acquiring virtual reality company Within Unlimited.

FTC's lawyer said on Friday that it had asked its internal court to force Meta and its founder Mark Zuckerberg to obtain FTC approval before making any future deals.

At an internal court hearing on Friday, FTC lawyer Abby Abby Dennis said the agency agreed to remove Zuckerberg from the federal case, but did not agree to do so in an internal lawsuit because it wanted broader legal relief.

The internal lawsuit will block Meta's acquisition of Within Unlimited and require Meta and Zuckerberg to give advance notice of future mergers or acquisitions and seek FTC's approval.

Under US M & A law, Meta is required to notify FTC and its sister agency, the Department of Justice, only if the value of the transaction reaches or exceeds $101 million. But a House of Representatives survey of Facebook in 2020 found that the company had acquired nearly 100 companies in the past decade, only one of which had been thoroughly scrutinized by FTC.

FTC's own research on the acquisitions of Facebook and four other large technology platforms found that they had acquired or invested in more than 800 small companies that did not require merger notice or review.