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Pfizer Inc. moving corporate HQ to the UK for reasons of taxation, offering $106bn to buy UK competitor in a transaction to circumvent the US tax system. Real patriots these Republican @sses …
Offshore Cash Hoard Expands by $183 Billion at Companies
(Bloomberg) Mar. 8, 2013 – The largest U.S.-based companies expanded their untaxed offshore stockpiles by $183 billion in the past year, increasing such holdings by 14.4 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL). and Google Inc (GOOG). each added to their non-U.S. holdings by more than 34 percent as they reaped the benefits of past maneuvers to earn and park profits in low- tax countries. Combined, those three companies alone plan to keep $134.5 billion outside the U.S. government’s reach, more than double the $59.3 billion they held two years earlier.
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Developments in offshore wealth, expertise of Mitt Romney, Bain Capital at all. (Bloomberg)The build-up of offshore profits — totaling $1.46 trillion for the 83 companies examined — is increasing because of incentives in the U.S. tax code for booking profits offshore and leaving them there. The stockpiles complicate attempts to overhaul the tax system as lawmakers look for ways to bring the money home and discourage profit shifting.
The ability to defer U.S. taxes until profits are brought home, the ease of shifting profits to low-tax countries and the world’s highest statutory corporate rate have all contributed to the growing stockpiles outside the U.S.
A report last year by analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM). estimated that all U.S.-based companies had $1.7 trillion in accumulated offshore profits. In the data compiled by Bloomberg, 83 companies had about 75 percent of last year’s total, which suggests that the total for all companies now exceeds $1.9 trillion.
General Electric Co (GE). again leads all U.S. companies with $108 billion held offshore, up from $102 billion a year earlier. Pfizer Inc. is second with $73 billion, followed by Microsoft, Merck & Co., Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and International Business Machines Corp. The data comes from companies’ annual regulatory filings.
Pfizer to Make AstraZeneca Takeover Case to Parliament
(Bloomberg) – Pfizer Inc. (PFE) Chief Executive Officer Ian Read will try to convince U.K. lawmakers today his company’s 60.4-billion-pound ($101.9 billion) offer for AstraZeneca Plc (AZN) is good for the British economy when he faces Parliament.
Read and his AstraZeneca counterpart, Pascal Soriot, will appear before the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee today. They’ll then go before the Science and Technology Committee tomorrow. Pfizer is planning to sweeten the bid for AstraZeneca for a second time, people with knowledge of the matter said. Pfizer will probably wait until after the hearings to offer more.
Members of British Parliament are concerned that Pfizer will cut jobs and close facilities, which has been its pattern in previous takeovers. Pfizer reiterated its pledge to keep 20 percent of its global research and development workforce in the U.K. and maintain AstraZeneca’s factory in Macclesfield, in a memorandum to the committees the company released yesterday. The company considers those commitments binding “as a matter of English law,” Pfizer said.
Harriet Fear to speak out about Pfizer’s hostile bid for AstraZeneca
Merger Would Let Pfizer Duck A Billion Dollars In U.S. Taxes Each Year
(ThinkProgress) Apr. 29, 2014 – A major corporate takeover in the prescription drug industry is motivated in part by a desire to duck billions of dollars in U.S. taxes, the Wall Street Journal reported. If Pfizer is successful in its bid for AstraZeneca, the combined firm would set up its technical headquarters abroad, slashing its tax liability but still allowing the company to conduct day-to-day operations from its current American headquarters.
Pfizer currently holds tens of billions of dollars in profits offshore to avoid American taxes, a practice so common that total offshored corporate profits hit $2 trillion earlier this year. Acquiring the British firm AstraZeneca and moving the merged company’s tax home to Ireland, the Netherlands, or some other tax haven country “would still allow me to access the offshore funds and do it in a tax-efficient way,” Pfizer’s top financial executive told the Journal.
London’s “Golden Triangle” or MedCity Aims To Rival Boston For Health Sciences
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○ Wealth Report: London, Not New York, Is World’s Greatest City – Russian Oligarchs and Petrodollars
