And as if the personality battles and global policy issues weren't enough, there is the decision of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to run for the Australian Senate from his domicile in the Ecuadorian embassy, a move that Assange's own mum has come out and called "awesome".
Faced with a grand tax bill from the Californian authorities if they registered her final abode in the state, they chose to list the actor's official domicile as New York, where Monroe had a second home, because the latter did not charge estate taxes.
"Monroe's representatives took one position on Monroe's domicile at death for 40 years, and then changed their position when it was to their great financial advantage; an advantage they secured years after Monroe's death by convincing the California legislature to create rights that did not exist when Monroe died.
Bursaries/Scholarships The school awards in excess of £1m a year in scholarships to eligible students, regardless of domicile.
While at the top end of society – for the gated 1%, with their offshore accounts and property portfolios – money has become physically unmoored from "domicile", so in the middle and at the bottom it has come to seem an increasingly abstract entity even as there is less of it to go around.
This week Prudential, a large British life insurer, said the regulations could push it to move its domicile from Britain (it would probably choose Hong Kong).
In 1996 it sold 25% of Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong's "flag-carrier" airline to CITIC, a Chinese investment firm, and other mainland investors.Jardine's fall into disfavour followed its decision in 1984 to shift its legal domicile to Bermuda, and then, a decade later, to delist its shares from the Hong Kong market.
Walgreens lowered its earnings forecast; and in response to growing American disquiet about firms using takeovers to shift their tax bases abroad ("tax inversions", as they are known), it also dropped a plan to use the deal to move its domicile to Europe.For failed predators and escaped prey alike the key to re-establishing momentum is to demonstrate strong operating performance.
But they will require international co-operation; if a few countries decided to opt out, they might become the tax domicile of choice, and revenues in the rest of the world would decline.
Under certain conditions an American firm buying a non-American one can switch its tax domicile to the home country of its takeover target, which is why so many drugs firms based in low-tax countries like Ireland have been bought up in the past few years.In September the US Treasury brought in new rules to make such "inversions" harder.
True, the euro will lead to a big growth in cross-border business, as currency risk disappears and investors begin to assess companies according to their industrial sector, not their domicile.
