Meta Sells Giphy to Shutterstock

MAY 23 2023 · 12:00

Skippy peanut, a peanut not in the deal. On 23 May 2023 Meta sold Giphy to Shutterstock for $53M, a 13 percent recovery on the $400M purchase price. Place: London (CMA jurisdiction) and Menlo Park (Meta) and New York (Shutterstock) Figures: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO · Andrew Tyrie / Sarah Cardell, successive CMA chairs · Paul Hennessy, Shutterstock CEO The UK Competition and Markets Authority opens its investigation of the Facebook-Giphy merger (see [[giphy-founded-2013]]) in June 2020, two weeks after Meta announces the deal. In November 2021 the CMA orders Meta to sell Giphy. Meta appeals. The Competition Appeal Tribunal upholds the CMA in July 2022. Meta runs out of appeals. On 23 May 2023, Meta announces it has sold Giphy to Shutterstock for $53 million, against the $400 million purchase price three years earlier. The 13% recovery is the most expensive single regulatory unwind of a tech acquisition in history. It is also the most public concession that the platform-monopoly era of US-and-UK tech regulation is, however briefly, operative.