The White House said Wednesday that the Treasury Department’s new rules aimed at curbing corporate inversions were not specifically targeted at the prospective Pfizer and Allergen merger that the companies have now called off.
“We were clear yesterday [when the anti-inversion rules were announced] that the action Treasury was taking was not focused on a particular transaction,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday.
Pharma giants Pfizer and Allergan have called off their $160 billion merger citing the new Treasury inversion rules as the reason. Pfizer was planning to move its headquarters to Ireland to save millions in taxes, and the combined company would have been the largest in a series of mergers constructed to significantly reduce their tax burden.
“The thing that people should understand [is] that this rule was under consideration by the Treasury Department for years, years before these two companies were considering a merger,” Earnest said.
