This is big news and you can mark it down as “exclusive”.

The Dealer can reveal that the world’s largest animal medicines company, Zoetis, is to relocate its international headquarters to Dublin in the summer.

Ireland’s generous tax base as well as its highly skilled and English-speaking workforce helped tease Zoetis from Brussels to Dublin.

I’m told that there will be an initial 30 or 40 top-level executives setting up base in Dublin, with more likely to be added in the future.

The move has been announced internally but will not be made known to the wider public until sometime nearer June.

Global centre

Dublin will be the centre for all of Zoetis’s business across the globe, with the exception of the US market.

Zoetis would be known to farmers here for its Covexin and Cydectin brands.

Zoetis had a revenue in 2014 of $4.2bn (€3.7bn). Zoetis was spun off from Pfizer in February 2013.