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Business: Cigarette companies: Plucky strike
商業：煙草公司：勇敢的罷工
A merger is the latest sign of Big Tobacco’s resilience.
一場象征大煙草復蘇的兼并。
British American Tobacco (BAT) announced on January 17th a final deal to buy Reynolds American for $49 billion.
英美煙草公司（BAT）在1月17日宣布最終以490億美元收購美國雷諾茲。
BAT already owns 42% of Reynolds; buying the rest of it will create the world’s largest listed tobacco company by sales and profits.
BAT已經擁有4雷諾茲42%的股份，收購其余股份將創造世界上在銷售和利潤上最大的上市煙草公司。
It will peddle brands such as Dunhill, Camel and Newport.
它旗下品牌如登喜路、駱駝和新港。
The casual observer might imagine the deal to be a frantic bid to revive an ailing industry.
外行人可能會認為這筆交易——去振興一個危害人身體健康的行業是一個瘋狂的舉動。
On the contrary.
其實不然。
Cigarettes may kill you, but the big companies that make them are rather healthy.
香煙可能殺死你，但大公司會使他們危害小一點。
That is despite a decline in smoking rates.
盡管吸煙率有所下降。
In 2015 just over a fifth of adults smoked, estimates the World Health Organisation, down from almost a quarter ten years earlier.
據世界衛生組織估計，2015年成年人吸煙人數剛剛超過五分之一，低于十年前的四分之一。
This drop hardly helps companies, but it isn’t ruinous either.
但是這種下降對公司沒有任何好處，也沒有太大損害。
Smoking is still popular in certain spots.
吸煙在某些場所仍很流行。
More than three-quarters of men light up in Indonesia, for example.
例如，印度尼西亞有超過四分之三的男人在吸煙。
The habit is becoming more common among men in Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.
這種習慣在非洲和地中海東部的男性中越來越普遍。
And though global smoking rates have fallen, population growth means that about 1.1 billion people still smoke, roughly as many as did in 2005.
盡管全球吸煙率已下降，但人口增長意味著仍有約11億人在吸煙，和2005年的人數差不多。
This, combined with rising prices, means that the value of retail sales jumped by 29% in the decade to 2015, according to Euromonitor, a data firm.
據一家數據公司Euromonitor統計，至2015的十年間，這個數據與上漲的物價一起意味著零售的價值躍升了29%。
The gravest threat to big cigarette makers comes from rivals.
對于大的香煙制造商來說，最大的威脅來自于競爭對手。
Indeed, this week’s deal increases the chance that Altria, which sells Marlboro in America, will be bought by Philip Morris International, which sells Marlboro elsewhere and is the industry’s leader to date—a scary prospect even for a merged BAT and Reynolds.
事實上，本周的交易增加了在美國銷售萬寶路的Altria公司將被Philip Morris International收購的機會，這家公司是在其他地方銷售萬寶路，至今都是業界領袖，即使對于合并后的BAT和Reynolds，它仍有著驚人的前景。
Regardless of whether their rivals’ deal proceeds, the merger of BAT and Reynolds has clear logic.
不管他們對手的交易是否進行，BAT和Reynolds的合并都有著顯而易見的道理。
The firms claim it could save at least $400m each year.
該公司聲稱這樣每年至少可以節省4億美元。
Reynolds will also give BAT access to America, a market that once looked repulsively litigious but now seems stable.
Reynolds也將BAT引入了美國，一度看起來極其排斥的市場現在似乎趨于穩定。
Companies still operate under a vast settlement reached with American states in 1998, but separate class-action suits have turned out to be less costly than feared.
公司的運作依舊是在1998年與美國各州達成的一系列協議之下，不過獨立集體訴訟的成本卻比公司所擔心的更低。
