Japan Tobacco Inc, the world's third-largest traded cigarette maker, bought 100 percent of Gallaher Group PLC, the maker of Benson and Hedges cigarettes in Europe, through a ?7.5 billion (US$15 billion) takeover bid.
The Tokyo-based maker of Camel cigarettes completed the acquisition, it said in a statement yesterday. Japan Tobacco is gaining the biggest share of the Russian market through the purchase. Gallaher had said it expected Japan Tobacco to conclude its takeover by April 18.
Tobacco companies are making acquisitions to move into emerging markets as western European governments crack down on smoking and to boost profit by reducing costs after expansion. Gallaher purchased Russia's biggest cigarette maker in 2000. Imperial Tobacco Group PLC, the producer of West cigarettes, offered 12 billion euros (US$16.3 billion) for Altadis SA this month.
Japan Tobacco said on Dec. 15 it aims to become bigger than British American Tobacco PLC, the industry's second-largest publicly traded company.
The acquisition of Gallaher will make the company the leader in the Russian cigarette market, Europe's biggest. Japan Tobacco expects the purchase to double its market share in the country to 34 percent. Altria Group Inc leads the Russian market, which consumes 370 billion cigarettes a year, according to Gallaher.
Gallaher's main brands include LD, one of the biggest tobacco labels in Russia, and Sovereign, the most popular cigarette in Kazakhstan. In the UK it sells Silk Cut and Mayfair cigarettes as well as Benson and Hedges.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
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