蜜芽传媒

British American Tobacco has unveiled a $47 billion takeover offer for the American cigarette maker Reynolds.

If the merger goes ahead it is expected to be friendly, because BAT already controls a stake of more than 40 percent in its American counterpart and the marriage will create the world's biggest tobacco company with brands like Lucky Strike, Camel and Dunhill.

Professor Nigel Driffield, from Warwick Business School in the UK, has been studying the internationalisation of big tobacco and he tells us about the underlying reasons for the takeover.