[5][6] BAT has operations in around 180 countries and its cigarette brands include Dunhill, Kent, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Rothmans.

[12] Under the management of James Augustus Thomas from Lawsonville, in North Carolina's Rockingham County, by 1919 the Shanghai factory was producing more than 243 million cigarettes per week.

[13] Thomas worked closely with the local Wing Tai Vo Tobacco Company, which developed into BAT's principal Chinese partner after its success with the "Ruby Queen" cigarette brand.

The important acquisition would elevate BAT to the number two position in Italy, the second largest tobacco market in the European Union.

[19] In August 2003, BAT acquired a 67.8% holding in the Serbian tobacco company Duvanska Industrija Vranje (DIV), allowing local manufacture of its brands, freeing them from import duties.

In the longer term, export opportunities are planned as neighbouring countries in south east Europe developed free trade agreements.

[27] In October 2016, BAT offered to buy the remaining 57.8 per cent of U.S. cigarette maker Reynolds American in a $47 billion takeover that would create the world's biggest listed tobacco company with brands including Newport, Lucky Strike and Pall Mall.

[31] In March 2021, the company bought a stake of close to 20% in the Canada-based cannabis producer OrganiGram for about £126 million as part of a diversification strategy.

Local brands owned by British American Tobacco include: Benson & Hedges, John Players Gold Leaf, Dunhill, Lucky Strike, Hollywood, Derby (Bangladesh), State Express 555 (Vietnam), Belmont (Colombia, Chile, Nicaragua and Venezuela), Jockey Club (Argentina), Stradbroke (Australia), Hollywood, Derby, Free, Minister and Plaza (Brazil), du Maurier (Canada), Prince (Denmark), North State (Finland), HB (Germany), Sopianae (Hungary), Wills (India), Ardath, Bentoel, and Tali Jagat (Indonesia), Carrolls, Carrolls Kings, Grand Parade, Black Allen (Germany), Sweet Afton, Major (Ireland), Boots, Alas (Mexico), Gold Leaf (Bangladesh, Pakistan), Jan III Sobieski (Poland), Yava Gold (Russia), Courtleigh, Peter Styvesant (South Africa), Kent, Pall Mall, Perilly's, Peter Stuyvesant, and Rothmans (Malaysia), Parisienne (Switzerland), Kent and Maltepe (Turkey), Xon, Astra and Karvon (Uzbekistan), Craven A (Vietnam and Jamaica) as well as BAT snus, Holiday, Freedom and Park Drive (New Zealand), Royals (UK and Malta), Embassy (Kenya), Viceroy, Newport, Lucky Strike in Dominican Republic and Delta in El Salvador.

[39] It's non-executive board members are Holly Keller Koeppel, Kandy Anand, Karen Guerra, Murray Kessler, Véronique Laury, Darrell Thomas and Serpil Timuray.

[43] Furthermore, BAT established The British American Tobacco Internship programme which is designed to help new graduates gain experience in their chosen field of study in a dynamic global organization.

[45] In 2005, a European Union (EU) directive was brought into force which required national governments to legislate to prevent tobacco sponsorship.

[47] In 2019, McLaren signed a multi-year partnership deal with BAT through its transformation agenda "A Better Tomorrow", bringing the company back into Formula 1 for the first time since Honda succeeded BAR.

[49][50] Vuse also partnered with the McLaren F1 Team to race bespoke liveries designed by emerging artists for the 2021 to 2023 Abu Dhabi Grands Prix.

Felton, and W.W. Reid – travelled to the United States that year and talked to dozens of experts inside and outside of the tobacco industry.

[57] In 1996, an internal document from British American Tobacco warned that, because of the spread of "extremist views" from fundamentalists in countries such as Afghanistan, the industry would have to "prepare to fight a hurricane".

[61] In September 2001, BAT invested US$7.1 million in North Korean state-owned enterprise called the Korea Sogyong Trading Corporation, which employs 200 people in Pyongyang to produce up to two billion cigarettes a year.

In addition, a number of Canadian provinces are teaming to sue tobacco companies to recover healthcare costs caused by smoking.

[65] On 1 June 2015, Quebec Superior Court Justice Brian Riordan has awarded more than $15 billion to Quebec smokers in a landmark case that pitted them against three Canadian cigarette giants, including JTI-Macdonald Corp.[66][67] In 2012, British American Tobacco, along with Philip Morris International and Imperial Tobacco, sued the Australian Commonwealth government.

At the High Court of Australia, they argued that the Commonwealth's plain packaging legislation was unconstitutional because it usurped the companies' intellectual property rights and good will on other than just terms.

[69] In late November 2015, an episode of BBC's Panorama programme alleged that BAT was bribing officials in Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya in exchange for their limiting the implementation of the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in their respective countries.

[70] In 2017, it was reported that BAT and other tobacco companies used a mixture of threats and bullying behaviour to stop or lessen the implementation of anti-smoking legislation in at least eight African countries.

Another document showed that lawyers acting on behalf of BAT requested that the high court in Kenya "quash in its entirety" anti-smoking legislation.

[71] The Serious Fraud Office opened a 'formal investigation' in August 2017 based on the dossier of evidence supplied by former employee and whistleblower Paul Hopkins.

[72][73] In January 2021, the Serious Fraud Office closed its investigation into corruption at BAT after concluding that the evidence gathered “did not meet the evidential test for prosecution as defined in the Code for Crown Prosecutors”.

[82][83] In April 2015, medical experts and anti-tobacco campaigners accused Philip Barton, the British High Commissioner to Pakistan, of lobbying for BAT interests.

[85] In August 2017, former employee and whistleblower Paul Hopkins released internal documents to The Guardian, a British newspaper, claiming British American Tobacco actively made efforts to market and sell its products in unstable, deeply impoverished nations and conflict zones, including Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Iraq.

Leaked PowerPoint presentations from 2011 included details of strategies to continue selling black-market cigarettes "in black paper bags" in parts of Somalia controlled by the fundamentalist Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab, plans to develop "a consumer relevant brand portfolio" and "sustainable... volume growth" in South Sudan just two days before the nation gained independence, and the active marketing and growth of the Kent cigarette brand in Iraq and Syria, despite "volatile markets" in the middle of the Iraq War and Syrian Civil War, respectively.

[86] In February 2021, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (OCCRP) published an investigation according to which trafficking of BAT cigarettes had helped finance jihadist and separatist groups in northern Mali using, among other mechanisms, a system of oversupplying the country with tobacco.

Attorney General Matthew Olsen, Department of Justice's assistant described the settlement fee as DOJ's first and largest single North Korean sanctions penalty.