“We are aggressively looking at all alternatives.” No balls - no babies!

The U.S. attempt to block companies from leaving the country for tax reasons wouldn’t stop Pfizer Inc. (PFE) from moving America’s biggest drugmaker overseas if it finds an attractive deal, Chief Executive Officer Ian Read said.

 

“If we believe the value is still there and we believe, under our interpretation of these rules, there is still value, I see no reason why we wouldn’t be able to do an inversion,” Read said yesterday in a telephone interview.

 

Pfizer has been on the hunt for a multibillion-dollar deal that would add to the New York-based drugmaker’s pipeline, cut costs, and help it escape the U.S.’s 35 percent corporate tax rate. Under the strategy called inversion, U.S. companies use mergers to shift their legal address to a lower-tax country without moving their operations.

 

The ideal transaction has all three components, Read said, though U.S. Treasury Department rules announced last month could lower the value Pfizer assigns to the tax advantages. A tax inversion isn’t required for a deal, Read has said.

 

“Certainly I feel a sense of urgency on utilizing our balance sheet and our capital to do deals that are incremental, add incremental value and certainly add revenue growth in the innovative space,” Read said on a conference call with analysts today. “We are aggressively looking at all alternatives.”

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-28/pfizer-lowers-full-year-sales-guidance-on-competition.html