Peddlers & Profiteers: Wall Street's Finest Pushing Tax-Dodging Mergers

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http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/07/29/peddlers-profiteers-wall-streets-finest-pushing-tax-dodging-mergers

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Wider reporting indicates that Wall Street has showed new urgency in initiating and completing such deals given the "inversion" trend has now received the attention of Congress and following recent remarks by President Obama who indicated he agreed with those who call the practice "un-patriotic" and damaging to the overall economy.

"It's legal, but it's not right," Obama said last week, addressing the issue while in California. "They're technically renouncing their U.S. citizenship," he said of the companies. "They're declaring they are based someplace else even though most of their operations are here. You know, some people are calling these companies corporate deserters."

According to Reuters:

The Obama administration has proposed legislation that would severely restrict the ability of US companies to invert, and while the effective date is January 1 2015, US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has called for the law to be made retroactive to May 2014.

Last week US Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden further fuelled the debate by accusing bankers of being in an "inversion feeding frenzy" and alluded to as many as 25 more possible tax-motivated M&A deals in the pipeline.