THE BIG DEALS OF 2017

£35.5bn British American Tobacco buys US rival Reynolds

£11.9bn Reckitt Benckiser deal for American Mead Johnson

£6.3bn Micro Focus buys US firm Hewlett Packard Enterprise

£612m Sage Group purchase of American developer Intacct

£247m Flooring firm Victoria snaps up Spanish Keraben

£220m Dialog deal for Silicon Valley based Silego Technology

£160m Engineer Spirax-Sarco snaps up Germany’s Gestra