The takeover of Friends Reunited, currently facing regulatory scrutiny, has found support from an unlikely quarter - the National Archives. The government's official archive rarely, if ever, intervenes in competition inquiries but it has backed the proposed sale of the social networking site operator - and its valuable genealogy subsidiary, Genes Reunited - to create a bigger rival to a larger American competitor. ITV has agreed to sell Friends Reunited to Brightsolid, a web company owned by DC Thomson, the Scottish publisher.
The National Archives said in a submission to the Competition Commission's investigation into the deal that a combination of Genes Reunited with Brightsolid's Find My Past site would create "more robust and serious competition" to Ancestry.com, the US-based market leader.
You can read more in an article by Tim Bradshaw in the Financial Times at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/719119b2-f8d0-11de-beb8-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1.
