Japan's antitrust watchdog can open a probe into any merger or business tie-up involving fitness tracker maker Fitbit if the size of such deals was big enough, Kazuyuki Furuya, the new chairman of the Fair Trade Commission , said on Monday.
Visitors walk past an advertising billboard for Fitbit Ionic watches at the IFA Electronics Show in Berlin, Germany, September 1, 2017. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch/FilesTOKYO: Japan's antitrust watchdog can open a probe into any merger or business tie-up involving fitness tracker maker Fitbit if the size of such deals was big enough, Kazuyuki Furuya, the new chairman of the Fair Trade Commission , said on Monday.
EU antitrust regulators in August launched an investigation into a US$2.1 billion deal by Alphabet unit Google's bid to buy Fitbit, a move aimed at taking on Apple and Samsung in the wearable technology market."If the size of any merger or business tie-up is big, we can launch an anti-monopoly investigation into the buyer's process of acquiring a start-up ," Furuya told Reuters in an interview.