In 1911 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the American Tobacco Company was "an attempt to monopolise" trade and ordered its break-up. Now two of the four companies that came out of the dismantled monopoly are recombining. On July 15th Reynolds American, the country's second-largest cigarette-maker, said it would pay $27.4 billion in cash and shares to take over Lorillard, the third-biggest. The merger shakes up the world's third-largest market by volume (behind China and Russia) and will have reverberations overseas.
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