Allergan (AGN) Slammed on New U.S. Treasury Inversion Action; Pfizer (PFE) Higher
Pending merger partners Allergan (NYSE: AGN) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) are trading in opposite directions following new efforts from the U.S. Treasury to curb inversions.
Today, the Treasury is seeking to limit inversions by disregarding foreign parent stock attributable to recent inversions or acquisitions of U.S. companies. This will prevent a foreign company (including a recent inverter) that acquires multiple American companies in stock-based transactions from using the resulting increase in size to avoid the current inversion thresholds for a subsequent U.S. acquisition.
In addition, the Treasury and the IRS are taking action to reduce the ability of companies to avoid taxes through earnings stripping.
PFE is up 1% and AGN is down 16%.