IHS, one of the largest data providers in the United States announced that it went into a merger recently with Markit, a global financial information and services firm based in London, for $13 billion and will move its headquarters to the United Kingdom.
As such, it will be the latest U.S. companies to call it quits in order to escape the country's high corporate taxes.
The Colorado-based company is merging with a smaller UK-based firm in a process which many industry observers call an "inversion." This is the term used to define big companies in the U.S. combining with foreign smaller companies abroad to reduce their corporate taxes in the country.
The resulting merger will be called IHS Markit and would have its headquarters in London. It will enjoy a lower corporate tax, the highest of which is around 20 percent. Compared to what the data provider pays in the U.S. which is about 35 percent, that represents considerable company savings.
Some key operations of the company though will be retained in Colorado.
Shareholders of IHS will do better in this merger than Markit's but it could be a lost opportunity for Intercontinental Exchange to take in Markit into a group that is centered on pure trading and market services.
But the opportunity of supplying the data required by investors, traders and banks in the financial market and to be able to utilize IHS's data for indexes to support new passive investment products like ETFs are enough prizes for the UK-based company.
A similar high demand for information was the reason for the planned merger of Deutsche Börse with the London Stock Exchange.
"The rationale for the merger is to create the leading global information services company and benefit from identified cost and revenue synergies," said Ed Mattix, IHS' senior vice president for corporate communications, in a company statement.
"We have adopted a tax structure we think is most appropriate for the combined company," he added.
