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Let's hope this god damn Allergan Merger doesn't go through & politicos stop it

Quote

anonymous

Guest
Both republicans and democrats are fighting it. Though our CEO seems to think its a great deal for America huh???

CEO Ian Read, who has made no secret of his desire to lower Pfizer's tax bill, seems to have anticipated this. During a call announcing the merger, he said that the company had "assessed the legal, regulatory, and political landscape" and had decided that this inversion was the best call.

Then, in an interview with CNBC's Meg Tirrell on Monday, Read said that "this is a great deal for America."

But not everyone agrees. Sanders was first to condemn the move.

"The Pfizer-Allergan merger would be a disaster for American consumers who already pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs," Sanders said in a statement on Monday. "It also would allow another major American corporation to hide its profits overseas."

Sanders added that the current government could put a block on the deal: "The Obama administration has the authority to stop this merger, and it should exercise that authority."

The US Treasury Department has done this before. In 2014, it issued a notice on tax inversions that ended a similar deal between pharmaceutical companies AbbVie and Shire. That move put a chill on inversions, which were popular in 2014.

And last week, the Treasury outlined more rules on tax inversions. Pfizer's Read, for his part, says the deal is compliant with regulations.

It's not immediately clear what Treasury would do to block the deal, and investors took the politician's comments in stride. Shares of Allergan were down about 3.3% in the afternoon, close to where they traded for most of the day.

"The tax system is complex, and some rules cannot be changed by the US Treasury without congressional approval," Moody's debt analysts wrote in a note Monday. "Any rule change that makes it more costly to access the two major sources of cash – i.e., cash existing at the time of the merger or future cash flow generated after the merger – would detract from the tax benefits of the deal."

Clinton pledges fight
Sanders wasn't alone.

Trump has also weighed in, blaming politicians for letting it happen.

"The fact that Pfizer is leaving our country with a tremendous loss of jobs is disgusting," he said in a statement to Business Insider. "Our politicians should be ashamed."

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also criticized the deal, saying in a statement: "For too long, powerful corporations have exploited loopholes that allow them to hide earnings abroad to lower their taxes. Now Pfizer is trying to reduce its US tax bill even further. This proposed merger, and so-called inversions by other companies, will leave US taxpayers holding the bag."

Clinton also said that, as president, she would fight inversion deals and promised to illustrate steps "to prevent these kinds of transactions." She also called upon regulators to intervene.

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley opposed the deal, too. In an emailed statement on Monday, he said: "The Pfizer-Allergan merger is fundamentally unfair, and a prime example of how our capitalist economy is not supposed to work. American small businesses and middle-class taxpayers do not have the ability to game the system and avoid paying the taxes they owe – Pfizer should not be able to either."

Pfizer and Allergan hope to finalize the deal in the second half of 2016.


 




I say do this merger.

Maybe it's time that America gives back to the rest of the world.

Screw American jobs. What about jobs in Mexico, Morocco, or Mali? Jobs in Africa and the Mideast are mere payback for imperial abuses and drone dropping on civilians.

Democrats need to show their true spots because they know this is right.

And F the republicans that think saving American jobs is what's important when they are the very ones cheering on the drones and the spying and blocking immigrants from coming out of the shadows when they are the backbone of this society doing the necessary work that Americans are too fat and lazy to do.
 




Bernie Sanders, lol..the man wants to turn this country into Greece. And Clinton would change her opinion tomorrow if polls showed it would get her more DEM votes...How about this, form your OWN opinion, stop spewing talking points? I suspect you may not be intelligent enough to do that...
 












Wazzamatter with all you people. This is the American Way - the rich using every trick in the book to get richer at everyone else's expense. We wouldn't have it any other way. The working and middle classes in the US are so abysmally stupid they keep voting to give more and more to the rich. Republicans rule!!!!!!
 




You know it is very interesting. I found out the other day that the one-quarter (top of the top percent) are those earning $647,000 per year. This is certainly a scant amount of people in the nation. People do not understand that is why the middle class pays for the most due to their volume. Certainly hedge fund manager and those earning the above are a minimal representation of this country. Funny how data gets so screwed to work how one wants it to work.
 












anonymous said:
You know it is very interesting. I found out the other day that the one-quarter (top of the top percent) are those earning $647,000 per year. This is certainly a scant amount of people in the nation. People do not understand that is why the middle class pays for the most due to their volume. Certainly hedge fund manager and those earning the above are a minimal representation of this country. Funny how data gets so screwed to work how one wants it to work.
Click to expand...

Oh, I get it now. The rich should pay less taxes because they are only 1% of the population.
 












To post #10 and the idiot: the point is taxing the 1% is not enough since a fraction of the population earns the above. So next they come down the ladder. The democrats think you are wealthy if you are earning $100,000 and that does not go very far in the East, California and other parts of the country BECASE EVERYONE PAYS SO MUCH IN TAXES ALREADY !
 




anonymous said:
To post #10 and the idiot: the point is taxing the 1% is not enough since a fraction of the population earns the above. So next they come down the ladder. The democrats think you are wealthy if you are earning $100,000 and that does not go very far in the East, California and other parts of the country BECASE EVERYONE PAYS SO MUCH IN TAXES ALREADY !
Click to expand...

Incorrect. EVERYONE does not pay so much in taxes. The 1% have so many loopholes the RATE they pay is less than the RATE that you and I pay. I'd be happy if we could get those greedy bastards to pay the same tax rate that I do but as heiress Leona Helmsley so famously sniffed "Only little people pay taxes". Thanks to all the idiots who blindly vote Republican, the tax rate for the 1% has gone down by 60% over the past 35 years.
 




anonymous said:
Incorrect. EVERYONE does not pay so much in taxes. The 1% have so many loopholes the RATE they pay is less than the RATE that you and I pay. I'd be happy if we could get those greedy bastards to pay the same tax rate that I do but as heiress Leona Helmsley so famously sniffed "Only little people pay taxes". Thanks to all the idiots who blindly vote Republican, the tax rate for the 1% has gone down by 60% over the past 35 years.
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yep, I will be voting democrat for the third time only.
 




As mergers and acquisitions grow alongside the increase of corporations moving their headquarters overseas to avoid taxes, our country is going to continue to feel the repercussions with more layoffs, and less tax revenue to go to our deteriorating infrastructure, public health, schools and local communities. We will continue to see an increase of taxes on the middle and lower class as they are burdened for the sake of these companies and the wealthy to maintain their "competitive edge." But this is the issue no one wants to confront. With the continued trends of corporate tax evasion and corporate consolidations, we are going to continue to have a lack of good paying jobs, a lack of competition, and a shrinking middle-class with limited choices for their consumer needs.
 




anonymous said:
Both republicans and democrats are fighting it. Though our CEO seems to think its a great deal for America huh???

CEO Ian Read, who has made no secret of his desire to lower Pfizer's tax bill, seems to have anticipated this. During a call announcing the merger, he said that the company had "assessed the legal, regulatory, and political landscape" and had decided that this inversion was the best call.

Then, in an interview with CNBC's Meg Tirrell on Monday, Read said that "this is a great deal for America."

But not everyone agrees. Sanders was first to condemn the move.

"The Pfizer-Allergan merger would be a disaster for American consumers who already pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs," Sanders said in a statement on Monday. "It also would allow another major American corporation to hide its profits overseas."

Sanders added that the current government could put a block on the deal: "The Obama administration has the authority to stop this merger, and it should exercise that authority."

The US Treasury Department has done this before. In 2014, it issued a notice on tax inversions that ended a similar deal between pharmaceutical companies AbbVie and Shire. That move put a chill on inversions, which were popular in 2014.

And last week, the Treasury outlined more rules on tax inversions. Pfizer's Read, for his part, says the deal is compliant with regulations.

It's not immediately clear what Treasury would do to block the deal, and investors took the politician's comments in stride. Shares of Allergan were down about 3.3% in the afternoon, close to where they traded for most of the day.

"The tax system is complex, and some rules cannot be changed by the US Treasury without congressional approval," Moody's debt analysts wrote in a note Monday. "Any rule change that makes it more costly to access the two major sources of cash – i.e., cash existing at the time of the merger or future cash flow generated after the merger – would detract from the tax benefits of the deal."

Clinton pledges fight
Sanders wasn't alone.

Trump has also weighed in, blaming politicians for letting it happen.

"The fact that Pfizer is leaving our country with a tremendous loss of jobs is disgusting," he said in a statement to Business Insider. "Our politicians should be ashamed."

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also criticized the deal, saying in a statement: "For too long, powerful corporations have exploited loopholes that allow them to hide earnings abroad to lower their taxes. Now Pfizer is trying to reduce its US tax bill even further. This proposed merger, and so-called inversions by other companies, will leave US taxpayers holding the bag."

Clinton also said that, as president, she would fight inversion deals and promised to illustrate steps "to prevent these kinds of transactions." She also called upon regulators to intervene.

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley opposed the deal, too. In an emailed statement on Monday, he said: "The Pfizer-Allergan merger is fundamentally unfair, and a prime example of how our capitalist economy is not supposed to work. American small businesses and middle-class taxpayers do not have the ability to game the system and avoid paying the taxes they owe – Pfizer should not be able to either."

Pfizer and Allergan hope to finalize the deal in the second half of 2016.
Click to expand...
 








anonymous said:
Needless profanity in the title. Really takes away from the credibility of your point. Needless.
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I think Trump wrote the headline. Profanity??? Like this: *#%#^#* are you one of the people whose feathers were ruffled as described in the article:

Politicians and people with souls agree: The Pfizer-Allergan merger is reprehensible

By MEGHANA KESHAVAN

Post a comment /


Pfizer’s $160 billion mega-merge with Allergan seems to have ruffled some feathers, to say the least. Headlines name it one of the largest deals in M&A history. But many are also calling it a “disaster” and a “disgrace” – emblematic of the corporate greed that’s swelling in the pharmaceutical industry.

The deal is being masqueraded as a means to “create a leading global pharmaceutical company with the strength to research, discover and deliver more medicines and therapies to more people around the world.” That’s how Pfizer Chairman and CEO Ian Read frames it in a statement, anyway.

But at core it’s an inversion deal driven by the financial lure of Ireland’s lower tax rates – Allergan’s home base – which will save Pfizer billions in taxes. It’s also a savvy business move – Ireland’s corporate tax rate is 12.5 percent, whereas the U.S. would levy 35 percent. Many companies – Medtronic included – have shifted their home bases to Ireland to take advantage of these tax rates – and more will likely follow.

“The Pfizer-Allergan deal will be the biggest inversion yet, and it is nothing short of a disgrace,” John Cassidy of the New Yorkerwrites. It encapsulates the kind of greed for which big pharma has developed a reputation: Benefitting from taxpayer-funded research coming from organizations like the National Institutes of Health – but avoiding paying taxes that fuel such breakthroughs from occurring.

“Even though the Obama Administration doesn’t have the legal powers to block the Allergan transaction, it should seek to shame Pfizer and its board of directors into calling it off,” he writes. It’s already been publicly lambasted by Hillary Clinton, whose pet cause of late has been to take down big pharma, and also by Bernie Sanders, as Vox points out. The already astronomical costs of drugs will not be helped by inversion deals such as these, politicians argue.

A successful annulment of this pronouncement looks unlikely, however. Despite Obama’s ramped up regulatory offense against inversion deals, this will likely pass without much trouble, as USA Today writes – because the deal is set up so Allergan, a much smaller company, is acquiring New York City-based Pfizer:

Allergan shareholders would own 44% of the new company while Pfizer investors would own 56%. Pfizer’s ownership share would fall below the 60% threshold to qualify as a tax inversion under the U.S. tax code, said Robert Willens, an international tax law expert based in New York City.

“If it’s not 60%, it’s not an inversion,” said Willens.

Treasury officials “may not care for” the pharma industry mega-deal, “but there’s not a lot they can do about it,” he added.

Instead of a tax inversion, the deal is “much more like a straightforward acquisition by a foreign company of a U.S. company,” said Larry Harding, who heads corporate development activities for Radius, a Boston-based company that helps U.S. firms deal with financial, tax, compliance and other logistics of operating overseas.

“There’s no U.S. legislation that would override a foreign company’s purchases,” said Harding.

Only two other deals outpace this one in financial history, as The New York Times indicates: Vodafone AirTouch’s $183 billion takeover of Mannesmann of Germany and AOL’s $165 billion buyout of Time Warner. The Allergan-Pfizer merge has made 2015 the most robust year in terms of merger activity in history – despite its tricky structure as a reverse merger.

Read added that this should create a “direct return of capital to shareholders, and continued investment in the United States, while also enabling our pursuit of business development opportunities on a more competitive footing within our industry.”

So far, the shareholder bottom line has suffered some: Reuters points out that Pfizer’s shares dropped 2.6 percent – “making it one of the biggest drags on the S&P.” Allergan’s stocks dropped 3.4 percent.

And of course, in today’s era of pharmaceutical consolidation and R&D outsourcing, it remains to be seen what impact this deal will have on employee rosters. Pfizer has about 96,000 employees, and Allergan about 15,000. As with any merger, jobs will undoubtedly be cut. Pfizer has a long history of R&D layoffs; at present, as Bloomberg states, Allergan’s development pipeline is far more robust.

“The fact that Pfizer is leaving our country with a tremendous loss of jobs is disgusting. Our politicians should be ashamed,” Donald Trump said a statement.

The fact that we have such, ah, bipartisan condemnation of this Pfizer-Allergan merger speaks volumes about the state of the pharmaceutical industry. It began with the outpouring of hate directed toward our friend Martin Shkreli, but is underscored emphatically here. It remains to be seen, particularly in the next election cycle, if U.S. regulators will wrestle back control of the industry.

Photo: Getty images
 




Still no need for profanity. No point is made here except that you are too ignorant to make your point using an educated vocabulary. "Rah! Rah! Let's use profanity and people will listen more to our pointless rant."
 




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