A recent document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Google has a mountain of funds it plans to use for potential international acquisitions. The SEC recently published a Form 10-K document that Google filed back in January of last year that discusses the company’s needs to expand internationally, and just how much money it plans to use in order to do so. Google said it has $20 to $30 billion in foreign earnings that it plans to use to acquire international firms. It pointed to expenses required to purchase firms like Motorola Mobility, which is now in the process of being sold off to Lenovo, for allocating those funds.
Google plans to spend $20 billion to $30 billion of its of its accumulated international profits to fund potential acquisitions of non-U.S. companies and technology rights. The company disclosed its plans to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year, in a document that was published Tuesday. The SEC had asked Google to describe its plans for reinvesting its undistributed earnings in greater detail. In 2012, Google generated about half of its revenue in non-U.S. markets. The company said it will continue to use a substantial part of the profit from that business to acquire non-U.S. companies. The alternative, repatriating those earnings to the U.S., could expose it to a significant tax bill. Google plans to do so because its global business has expanded into other product offerings such as mobile devices, where its competitors and business partners are no longer primarily U.S.-based multinationals, Google told the SEC.
