Pfizer-Allergan Merger Redo Seen Unlikely as Tax Rule Rejected

By Lynnley Browning, Bloomberg News

A federal judge last week overturned a tax regulation that stopped the planned $160 billion merger between Pfizer Inc. and Ireland-based Allergan Plc last year-- but the ruling doesn’t necessarily mean the deal would be revived, experts said.

The proposed merger drew nationwide outcry over the prospect that it would move the new company’s tax address overseas in a so-called corporate inversion. The merged company’s tax address would have been in Ireland, where the corporate rate is 12.5 percent. But now, with Congress and President Donald Trump working on a rewrite of the U.S. tax ...