Imperial Tobacco's Altadis takeover offer

UK's Imperial Tobacco Group pays 50 eur per Altadis share, valuing the manufacturer of Gauloise and Fortuna cigarettes at 12.8 bln eur.

The board of the Franco-Spanish company
Altadis took the offer and the European Comittee and the Spanish
market regulator assigned the aquisition.

The takeover will create Europe's
second-largest tobacco company, behind Altria Group's Philip Morris,
making about 312 billion cigarettes a year. After completion of the
purchase, Imperial Tobacco will remain the fourth biggest tobacco
company in the world, after Philip Morris, British American Tobacco
and Japan Tobacco. The new entity would have had too large a
stranglehold on the markets for rolling tobacco in France, Italy,
Portugal and Spain, and in pipe tobacco in Finland and France, and
cigars in Greece. Last year, Imperial Tobacco bought US group
Commonwealth Brands, the fourth-biggest player in the United States,
for 1.9 billion dollars.