Nearly a year after Medtronic made the controversial decision to merge with Covidien and move its official headquarters from Minnesota to Ireland, the company’s executives have an enviable problem: how to spend the initial $9.3 billion in cash freed up by the deal.
The money came from $9.8 billion in overseas funds Medtronic was able to bring back into the U.S. to use, with the company only having to pay $500,000 in taxes, a roughly 5% rate versus the 35% corporate tax rate Medtronic would have to pay if it was still headquartered in the U.S.
