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As was extensively reported over the weekend, the Pfizer-Allergan tax-inverting, reverse-merger (in which the far The combinsmaller Allergan would end up "buying" Pfizer, courtesy of fungible debt which doesn't care where it ends up as long as there are cash flows) would be announced this morning, and sure enough, moments ago the long-awaited press release finally hit. Here are the details:Pfizer and Allergan to Combine Creates a new global biopharmaceutical leader with best-in-class innovative and established businessesEnhances revenue and earnings growth profile of innovative and established businessesBroadens innovative pipeline with more than 100 combined mid-to-late stage programs in developmentTransaction...

The drug giants Pfizer and Allergan are in talks to merge. If successful, the deal could be the largest this year. Allergan has a market value of about $113 billion. It could also offer Pfizer something the US company has been after for a while -- a way to slash its tax bill. It could do so with a so-called tax inversion, a legal move in which a US company merges with a foreign-domiciled company to shift its address to a country with a lower tax rate. In this case it would have Pfizer moving its tax domicile — not...

As many Democrats attack companies that take advantage of corporate tax inversions, former President Bill Clinton expressed sympathy for them. “Like it or not, this inversion, this is their money,” Mr. Clinton said in an interview during the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. When asked whether inversions — the practice of American companies acquiring a small overseas rival and reincorporating abroad to lower their tax bills — are unpatriotic, as many critics say, Mr. Clinton said that publicly traded companies, in particular, “feel duty bound to pay the lowest taxes they can pay.” “I should make full disclosure here,”...

It was supposed to be the populist issue that would enrage the middle class and set them with pitchforks against big corporations who were being "economic traitors" by moving their headquarters overseas in order to avoid the high corporate taxes in America.The so-called "inversion" issue would allow the Democrats to ride a wave of popular disgust against Republicans to victory in November. Instead, as Politico points out, the issue is so much of a dud, that the Democrats have quietly de-emphasized much of the white hot rhetoric the president has used to portray corporations as "un-American" who move their operations...

It's official. Chrysler has now wholly-merged with Italian auto maker, Fiat. It had taken a bit over five years for Fiat to gain total control of the bailed out, once-American Chrysler Corporation. Back in June of 2009, President Obama gifted (payment was made in the form of "technology") an initial 20% stake in Chrysler to Fiat as part of his orchestrated auto bailout process. Fiat parlayed that into full ownership and is now showing its gratitude to the American taxpayers who helped fund the deal by relocating Chrysler's headquarters to London ; a move which will lessen the company's...

The merger of U.S. hamburger giant Burger King with Tim Hortons, Canada’s favorite coffee shop, will create the world’s third largest fast-food company, with a total of 18,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. It is also a piercing wake-up call for the U.S., because the new company will make its global headquarters in Canada’s province of Ontario. That underscores what savvy businesses everywhere have learned — the U.S. is an increasingly less attractive place to do business. “Canada has quietly and politely become, well, more American than America,” says columnist Stephen Green. Since 2003, more than 35 major U.S. companies...

If you’re looking to move from Miami to Canada, as Burger King Worldwide is, chances are excellent that your motive is something other than the weather. The word “inversion” has entered the popular vocabulary, describing a tax-driven corporate merger in which a U.S. firm acquires an overseas company and then relocates its legal domicile to that firm’s home tax jurisdiction. The purpose of this is in no small part to escape the onerous U.S. corporate income tax. That’s what Burger King is looking to do by acquiring beloved Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons, which is based in Ontario. A number...

It's no surprise Burger King is merging with Tim Hortons and moving its headquarters to Canada. Taxes are much lower there. What's strange is the deal's being financed by someone who believes in higher taxes here. Burger King is buying the Canadian donut chain for just over $11 billion. To seal the deal, legendary investor Warren Buffett — a man whose acumen we very much respect, by the way — is taking a 9% stake in the combined companies for an estimated $3 billion. In effect, he's financing Burger King's tax move. This is richly ironic, given that Buffett has...

Speaking to CNBC in May on the subject of tax inversion deals, Warren Buffett said, “it does get a little annoying when we see other people paying far lower tax rates while engaging in the same sorts of businesses that we engage in.” Now Buffett appears to have decided to get in on the game: The Oracle of Omaha is extending financing to Burger King for its planned takeover of Canadian coffee-and-donuts chain Tim Hortons , the Wall Street Journal reported Monday evening, citing sources familiar with the deal. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway will provide roughly 25% of the financing, the...

<p>Burger King Worldwide Inc. BKW +1.01% is in talks to buy Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain Tim Hortons Inc., THI.T +2.79% a deal that would be structured as a so-called tax inversion and move the hamburger seller's domicile abroad, according to people familiar with the matter.</p>

It’s not just fat cat hedge funds, banks or Wall Street investment companies that benefit when U.S. companies cut their tax bills by moving their headquarters overseas via mergers with foreign concerns. More than a dozen state government pension funds that run retirement accounts for government workers like teachers, cops and firemen own big chunks in these “corporate deserters,” too. Five U.S. companies merging with overseas concerns have big state government pension investments amounting to nearly $2 billion, based on data provided by Richard Peterson, senior director at S&P Capital IQ. But you don’t hear about government pension investments in...

When he’s in trouble, President Obama changes the subject to the economy. And in speech after speech, he utters some version of this line: “We know from our history, our economy does not grow from the top down, it grows from the middle up.” This is a puzzling statement. I don’t know what it means, much less whether it’s true. I asked a number of economists and they were no help. “I have no idea what it means,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, says. “I am unaware of any literature supporting the proposition,” Kevin Hassett,...

Obama has called “for an end to a corporate loophole that allows companies to avoid federal taxes by shifting their tax domiciles overseas in deals known as “inversions.” Such as statement shows the utter ineptitude that Obama has for understanding a) what inversion actually is and b) how his policies are the cause.

Mark Cuban isn't a fan of tax inversions, either. Last night, President Obama spoke with CNBC's Steve Liesman, and their first topic of conversation was the issue of tax inversions, or mergers where U.S.-based companies acquire foreign companies and move their tax base overseas to enjoy lower rates. Obama said this strategy, among other things, "undermines people's confidence in how companies are thinking about their responsibilities to the country as a whole." Cuban took his rhetoric a step further: he said he's selling stock in companies that move for tax reasons. On Twitter this morning, Cuban fired off a series...

Sometimes even journalists get it right. My essay about companies incorporating overseas to dodge taxes, “Positively Un-American,” featured in our last issue, clearly struck a nerve. Since its publication, these corporate “inversions”—a euphemism for “desertions”—have taken on a life of their own. Barely a day seems to pass without a corporation announcing that it plans to leave the U.S. to save taxes but wants to continue having its business, its employees, its directors, and especially its top executives benefit from our rule of law, democratic system, and the other great things that make America America. It just doesn’t want to...

The Obama administration has urged congressional leaders to take swift action to halt the rush of United States companies moving abroad. In letters sent to four lawmakers, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said the administration supported a quick fix that would halt the trend of so-called inversions, in which United States companies buy a smaller competitor and reincorporate overseas to save money on taxes. Speaking at the CNBC Delivering Alpha conference on Wednesday, Mr. Lew called for legislation that would include a package of business reforms, one of which would bring tax levels of companies in the 20 percent range....