Wall Street Has Raked In Almost A Billion Dollars Helping Companies Move Overseas To Dodge Taxes

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As more and more American companies have used international mergers to move their profits out of U.S. tax jurisdiction, the Wall Street firms that encourage and facilitate the deals have raked in close to a billion dollars in fees. The top 10 firms to work on the so-called “inversion” deals have brought in $819.8 million from the deals in just the past three years, according to a New York Times analysis. The top of the list of corporate offshoring advisers is full of familiar names. Goldman Sachs leads the way with an estimated $203 million in fees, followed by JP Morgan ($185 million), Morgan Stanley ($98 million), and Citigroup ($72 milion). Those figures represent just the past three years of deals and are based on both public disclosures and analyst estimates of the fees paid in various corporate deals. The deals in question — called “inversions” because they involve an American company buying a foreign-held firm based in a low-tax country and then flipping the merged company’s address to the tax haven nation without necessarily relocating in any practical sense — have boomed in the years since the recession. But the Times figures only date to 2011, so fees paid to the banks on dozens of inversions in prior years aren’t counted.
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As more and more American companies have used international mergers to move their profits out of U.S. tax jurisdiction, the Wall Street firms that encourage and facilitate the deals have raked in close to a billion dollars in fees. The top 10 firms to work on the so-called “inversion” deals have brought in $819.8 million from the deals in just the past three years, according to a New York Times analysis. The top of the list of corporate offshoring advisers is full of familiar names. Goldman Sachs leads the way with an estimated $203 million in fees, followed by JP Morgan ($185 million), Morgan Stanley ($98 million), and Citigroup ($72 milion). Those figures represent just the past three years of deals and are based on both public disclosures and analyst estimates of the fees paid in various corporate deals. The deals in question — called “inversions” because they involve an American company buying a foreign-held firm based in a low-tax country and then flipping the merged company’s address to the tax haven nation without necessarily relocating in any practical sense — have boomed in the years since the recession. But the Times figures only date to 2011, so fees paid to the banks on dozens of inversions in prior years aren’t counted.

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