Welcome back. We're charging through to the end of 2021 here at Emlex's weekly podcast. Thank you for staying with us

throughout this rather challenging year. It's great to have your company again.

My name is James Panicki and this is your weekly dose of regulatory affairs,

thanks to Emlex's crack team of reporters around the globe.

Now, in just over 10 minutes time, we'll be crossing to Washington, D.C.

for a look at the Biden administration's

ambitious strategy to combat corruption. There's no arguing with the intentions behind

the drive for tougher laws, but have we heard it all before? Our reporter Robert Thomason

will be with us to answer that very question. First up though, killer acquisitions are back on the agenda.

Our regular listeners know all about them.

It's when a tech giant acquires a startup before it has had a chance to develop into a rival.

Killer acquisitions are the bane of regulators around the world. Why is that? Well, because a regulator

might not be able to block a deal that isn't anti-competitive right here and now, but is essentially

been driven by a desire to neutralise future competition. And in Europe, the plans by Facebook,

or meta, as we're now calling it, to acquire a small company called customer, has highlighted differences among competition watchdogs as they

approach what they suspect are indeed killer acquisitions. And Facebook appears to have been

caught in the middle of this.

My Brussels-based colleagues Andrew Boyce and Nicholas Hurst have written a fine piece of analysis about what's going on.

And Nicholas joins us right now.

So, Nicholas, it's safe to say that last week wasn't a great one for Facebook.

That's right. They're trying to buy this small company called Customer,

which is basically a company that helps companies communicate with their customers.

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