When Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries announced Monday their acquisition of Dublin-based generic drugmaker Allergan PLC for $40.5 billion, it marked the end of its hostile bid for another generics giant Mylan NV, co-founded by the late Milan "Mike" Puskar.
While Mylan's 2014 purchase of Abbott Laboratories' generic drug unit and subsequent "inversion," shifting of the merged company's identity to the Netherlands, drew criticism for the lighter tax load it would enjoy there as opposed to the heavier burden stateside, the move also likely kept Teva from gobbling up Puskar's company.
As the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, it is becoming clearer that a lowered rate is not the only advantage Mylan secured in relocating its tax headquarters. Over the past decade, Dutch business laws have been structured to give greater control of companies that locate there to boards of directors rather than shareholders.
The result, proponents of these policies say, allows for true investment and long-term planning rather than simply profit-taking. In a May meeting with investors impatient with management's apparent lack of action on a $40 billion takeover offer from Teva, the Journal reports Mylan Executive Chairman Robert Coury responding in salty language, "This is a stakeholder company, not a shareholder company."
It should be noted that Allergan, the company that Teva did buy, has its tax headquarters in Ireland, which also offers a lower rate than in the U.S., but has business laws that favor the will of the shareholder.
(In a related development, European regulators have given the green light to Mylan's bid for Irish drugmaker Perrigo, which has so far resisted its overtures. According to Reuters, a meeting of Mylan shareholders to vote on the acquisition is scheduled for Aug. 28.)
Regardless of which camp one chooses in terms of the control of a corporation, it should be clear that the trend of companies shifting their tax identities overseas signals a need for a re-examination and overhaul of domestic policies in order to keep businesses like Mylan, with roots in Greenbrier County, independent, intact and growing jobs here in the U.S.
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What's fair is fair, right?
Maybe not when it comes to the City of Charleston user fee and West Virginia American Water Company's rate increase request.
At its most recent meeting on July 20, Charleston's city council voted to intervene in the water company's 28 percent rate hike request, currently pending before the state's Public Service Commission.
Before it can increase its rates, the water company must submit hundreds, if not thousands of pages of documents to the PSC, answer scores of questions and participate in numerous public hearings, then be subject to the Commission's decision.
Yet, on the same day they voted to intervene in the water company case, council members themselves voted a 25 percent increase in taxes - the user fee - to everyone who works in the city.
The fee increase came on a vote on the ordinance presented two weeks earlier - no process for interveners, no extended comment period for the public, no real opportunity for input from the folks that will have to pay the higher rate, simply the increase proposed at one meeting and passed the next.
The water company wishes it could be so lucky.
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A panel appointed by the state Racing Commission is looking at ways to save dog racing in West Virginia, the Gazette-Mail's Phil Kabler reported recently.
Betting on greyhounds at the state's four race tracks has dropped more than half from 2005 to 2014. Track owners and dog breeders are looking at ways to reinvigorate the sport.
One Charleston news reader has a doggone good, if not at all serious, idea: "They need to spice it up; rejuvenate the sport," the reader emailed. "The (FestivALL) Weiner Dog race gets big crowd ..."
Now there's a thought.