‘Handicapped’ by Tax
In fact, Valeant’s foreign tax advantage has forced other drugmakers to pursue similar strategies of moving their legal address outside the U.S. Allergan Plc, then called Actavis, bought Warner Chilcott Plc for US$8.5 billion in 2013 in part because the company couldn’t compete on deals with the likes of Valeant.
On a conference call, then-CEO Paul Bisaro called his company “handicapped because we’re competing against companies that have those tax structures already in place.” Actavis later beat out Valeant for Allergan in a US$66 billion deal.
“Allergan today would have remained an American company” if not for the foreign tax advantages of potential buyers, former Allergan CEO David Pyott told lawmakers at the hearing.
Last year, the Obama administration announced plans to develop rules designed to stop U.S. corporations from moving overseas. The companies were buying smaller, foreign-domiciled targets and using the transaction to shift their own legal addresses and cut their tax rates.
In October 2014, on a call with investors, Schiller was asked whether the proposed U.S. rules would give Valeant an advantage in buying companies since it already had a low tax rate and competitors didn’t.
“Those Treasury regulations have zero impact on our tax status, our tax rate,” Schiller