History
The company traces its origins to 1898, and it was incorporated in 1949 as the Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation (日本専売公社, Nippon Senbai Kōsha?), Japan Tobacco was a state monopoly until 1985, when it became a public company. It was two-thirds owned by the Japanese Ministry of Finance until June 2004, and the Japanese government share is presently 50%. It was announced in May 2012 that the government would sell one-sixth of the company's outstanding shares to raise ¥500 billion to finance reconstruction from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
JT International (JTI), acquired in 1999 from R.J. Reynolds, is an operating division of Japan Tobacco Inc., handling the international production, marketing and sales of the group's cigarette brands. It sells Camel, Salem, and Winston brands outside the USA.
Japan Tobacco also operates in foods, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness, engineering, and real estate. Japan Tobacco completed the largest ever foreign takeover in Japanese history through acquisition of Gallaher Group plc in April 2007.
Japan Tobacco runs the Tobacco and Salt Museum in Shibuya, Tokyo.
Japan Tobacco controls 66.4% of the cigarette market in Japan and will seek more takeovers from 2009 to build on the 1.4 trillion JPY (USD 15 billion) purchase of Gallaher Group, with then-President Hiroshi Kimura commenting that further acquisitions would be appropriate after the full integration of Gallaher by 2009.
In 2006/2007 Japan Tobacco starts Serbia production, plans to invest another $100 million, have paid $35 million euros for 98.5 percent of Senta Tobacco Industry in May 2006, with a further $10 million invested since then. The plant has a production capacity of some five billion cigarettes a year.
In April it was announced that Mitsuomi Koizumi would become President, and president Hiroshi Kimura would become Chairman of JT. and Chairman Yoji Wakui would retire. Wakui had previously been a bureaucrat at the ministry of finance. Koizumi assuming the presidency meant that for the first time since the 1985 privatization neither president nor chairman was from the ministry of finance. Koizumi, who had been Executive Deputy President, became president in June 2012.
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