Hello, welcome back to Emlex's weekly podcast covering regulatory affairs with the assistance of our team of reporters around the world. My name is James Panicki. I'm Emlex's Asia Pacific Senior

Editor. Now, it's hard to understate the significance of the two lawsuits targeting Facebook

that have been announced in the United States this week. The ambition of the court action by

the US Federal Trade Commission and a collection of 48 states and territories

is staggering. If the enforcers have their way, Facebook could be broken up, its future

acquisitions could be vetted, and the novel theory of antitrust harm centering on privacy and

innovation could wreak havoc on the social media platform's business model.

Now, we know that President Donald Trump is no fan of EU regulators. He sees them as a pack of

US hating socialists. Well, these two lawsuits go beyond any enforcement action hitherto attempted

by the European Commission. Kusita Vassant is Emlex's senior antitrust correspondent.

She's been writing about these developments from Washington, D.C.,

and I'm delighted to say that she's joining us right now.

Cushita, firstly, explain to me what has happened in this extraordinary week.

Hi, James.

So finally, the lawsuit that we all were expecting to drop this year has come about.

So the Federal Trade Commission and a group of 48 states and territories in the US

basically hit Google with two separate lawsuits.

They're not identical word for word, but they're very similar in what they ask the court to do.

So according to me, from a preliminary reading of the two lawsuits, and they basically ask the court that there should be prior notice and

prior approval for Facebook's mergers and acquisitions. And they have privacy concerns. I think

this is significant because finally privacy has jumped from being an academic theory that economists

and consultants would talk about into actual legal risk for companies.

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