Business Services Industry

British American Tobacco to Pay High Price for Italian Firm.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, July, 2003

By Meera Selva, Sunday Business, London Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Jul. 20--British American Tobacco's shareholders must be desperate for a cigarette to calm their nerves after last week's announcement that the company has agreed to buy Ente Tabacchi Italiano (ETI) for a generous E2.3 billion ($3.6 billion, UKpound 1.6 billion).

The amount is almost double what the Italian government had hoped to receive from the auction and comes in at 13 times ETI's earnings.

ETI is a substantial business -- it controls 26 percent of the Italian cigarette market, the second largest in Europe -- but the deal has left the City uneasy.

BAT, which makes Dunhill and Lucky Strike among others, has been ruthless in its drive to gain ETI....

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works. HighBeam Research

 

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

Please add your comment:

  1. You are currently: a Guest |
  2.  

Basic HTML tags that work in comments are: bold (<b></b>), italic (<i></i>), underline (<u></u>), and hyperlink (<a href></a)

advertisement
advertisement
  • Click Here
  • Click Here
  • Click Here
advertisement
Click Here