On 20 October 2021, the CMA announced it has imposed a fine of £50m on Facebook for failing to comply with the requirements of an initial enforcement order (IEO) imposed on Facebook by the CMA in relation to Facebook’s completed acquisition of Giphy, Inc. The transaction in question is still subject to a UK merger control investigated by the CMA.

The CMA’s penalty decision has not yet been published but its press release referred to Facebook having “significantly limited the scope” of the regular updates outlining its compliance with the IEO which Facebook is required to provide to the CMA, “despite repeated warnings from the CMA”. The CMA also stressed this is the first time a company has been found to have breached an IEO by “consciously refusing to report all the required information”.

The fine was issued under s94A of the Enterprise Act 2002, under which the CMA can impose a fixed penalty of up to 5% of a company's total worldwide turnover for failure to comply with an IEO without reasonable excuse. It is the CMA’s highest ever of this type, with the previous record being £325,000. Whilst the fine is turnover-based and the quantum therefore also reflects the size of Facebook, the fine is extremely high for failing to comply with an IEO and in fact much higher than many fines for infringing competition law in final decisions.  As such, it not only shows the CMA’s willingness to fully use its powers to impose administrative penalties during merger cases but is also yet another indication of the CMA taking an ever more interventionist approach in such cases, particularly as regards un-notified completed mergers.