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  US drugs giant Pfizer has scrapped a planned merger with Ireland's Allergan amid plans to change US tax laws.
The decision comes two days after the US Treasury announced fresh plans to prevent deals known as "inversions", where a US firm merges with a company in a country with a lower tax rate.

The companies said on Wednesday that the deal had been terminated "by mutual agreement,"� a decision "driven by the actions announced by the U.S. Department of Treasury on April 4, 2016, which the companies concluded qualified as an "Adverse Tax Law Change"� under the merger agreement."�

 The Pfizer-Allergan deal, valued at $160bn (�113bn), would have been the biggest example of an "inversion".It would also have been the biggest pharmaceutical deal in history.

 Pfizer said the move was "driven by the actions announced" by the US Treasury.

Pfizer's chairman and chief executive, said: "Pfizer approached this transaction from a position of strength and viewed the potential combination as an accelerator of existing strategies."

He added that the company could look at splitting off part of the business.

"We plan to make a decision about whether to pursue a potential separation of our innovative and established businesses by no later than the end of 2016, consistent with our original timeframe for the decision prior to the announcement of the potential Allergan transaction."