Pfizer Says Its Bid for AstraZeneca Is Dead
Source: New York Times
Pfizer confirmed on Monday that it had ended its audacious bid to buy AstraZeneca, Britain’s second-largest pharmaceutical company.
In a statement, the company said it “does not intend to make an offer for AstraZeneca” in the wake of the rejection of what Pfizer called its final offer earlier this month. The cash-and-stock offer, which valued AstraZeneca at about $119 billion, would have created the world’s largest drug company.
... The advances by Pfizer, the maker of best-selling drugs like Lipitor and Viagra, pitted two of the world’s largest drug makers against each other. Powerful political forces on both sides of the Atlantic weighed in on corporate taxes, cancer research and the potential effect on jobs in Britain, where an economic recovery is underway but employment remains shaky.
... AstraZeneca played up Pfizer’s interest, if the merger were to go through, to relocate to Britain for tax purposes, a tactic known as an inversion. Such a deal would allow Pfizer to escape a higher American corporate tax rate and free its overseas earnings from any claims by United States tax collectors.
Read more: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/26/pfizers-says-its-bid-for-astrazeneca-is-dead
= new reply since forum marked as read
