Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE: MO) (previously named Philip Morris Companies Inc.), based in New York City, is one of the world's largest food, beverage, and tobacco corporations and a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.

It owns the brands Marlboro under its Philip Morris USA arm and retains a majority stake in Kraft Foods and a 36% interest in SABMiller, parent company of Miller Brewing.

Altria's tobacco subsidiary, Philip Morris, is the world's largest commercial tobacco company by sales. (The China National Tobacco Co. and Japan Tobacco sell larger volumes.) Their flagship Marlboro is the world's most popular tobacco brand. Other popular tobacco brands owned by Philip Morris are Parliament, Virginia Slims, and Benson and Hedges (in some markets only).

Philip Morris was begun by a London tobacconist of the same name. He was one of the first people to sell hand-rolled cigarettes in the 1860s, selling them under the brand names Oxford and Cambridge Blues, following the adoption of cigarette smoking by British soldiers returning from the Crimean War. The company opened its New York office in 1902 and soon became part of James Duke's American Tobacco Company monopoly.

Though Altria's headquarters are still in New York, in 2004 its Philip Morris USA division completed a move of its 682 New York based employees to Richmond, Virginia to consolidate operations and achieve cost savings for shareholders.^[1]

Philip Morris bought Kraft Foods on October 30, 1988 for US$13.1 billion, in a bid to diversify from the declining tobacco business and to reduce litigation risk. It also purchased the Nabisco division of the former RJR Nabisco in 2000.

On January 27, 2003, Philip Morris Companies Inc. changed its name to Altria Group Inc., to shed its image as merely a tobacco company.

Holdings

Altria owns 100 percent of Philip Morris USA, Philip Morris International, and Philip Morris Capital Corporation. It also owns 85 percent of Kraft Foods Inc. and 29 percent of SABMiller plc.

Corporate Office Location

• 120 Park Avenue
• New York, NY 10017
• USA
• Telephone: 1 917 663 4000
• Fax: 1 917 663 2167

History

Philip Morris opened a shop in London's Bond street in 1847, selling tobacco and rolled cigarrettes. Upon Mr. Morris death, his wife Margaret and his brother Leopold took care of the business.

The company went public in 1881, Joseph Grunebaum joined Leopold to create Philip Morris & Company and Grunebaum, Ltd., which dissolved after four years, and renamed as Philip Morris & Co., Ltd.

In 1894 the company was taken over by William Curtis Thomson and his family, finally leaving out the original family control. Under Curtis Thomson, the company was appointed tobacconist to King Edward VII and, in 1902, Gustav Eckmeyer incorporated it in New York. Ownership was split 50-50 between the British parent and American partners. Eckmeyer had been its sole agent for Philip Morris in the USA since 1872, importing and selling English-made cigarettes.

Their logo was created in 1919, and also this year the company was acquired in the USA by a new firm owned by American stockholders, and its incorporation in the state of Virginia under the name of Philip Morris & Co., Ltd., Inc., establishing a factory in Richmond, Virginia.

Marlboro, its most famous brand, was introduced in 1924.

In the mid-1950s the company launched Philip Morris International to manufacture and market its products around the world.

Lawsuits and Media Critical of Philip Morris and

Altria

There have been lawsuits by individuals and classes of people who claim Altria/Philip Morris cigarettes cause cancer and other fatal diseases. Various films and documentaries address the business practices of tobacco companies (The Insider), and a visit to the Philip Morris headquarters by a group of lung and throat cancer victims was featured in (Michael Moore's The Awful Truth TV show).

The Insider - Jeffrey Wigand

The movie The Insider is based in the campaign against Jeffrey Wigand, employee of Brown & Williamson (B&W), makers of Kool and Sir Walter Raleigh cigarettes. Wigand, Vice President for Research and Development, is fired (September 1993) after he advocates for the company to remove coumarin [2], an additive similar to rat poison, which is known to cause tumors in the livers of mice.

60 Minutes interview

He Wigand asked by 60 minutes producer Lowell Bergman to assist as an analyst of Philip Morris documents that Bergman had received anonymously. But "CBS toned down a "60 Minutes" interview with tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand; months of bad press followed before it ran the full interview." [3]

60 Minutes faced ethical charges for withholding the cigarette story. In 1995, it held a Mike Wallace interview with tobacco whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, a move widely viewed as caving into pressure from CBS higher-ups." [4]

In April 1994, the CEOs of the seven tobacco companies testified before Congress that "nicotine is not addictive", including William Campbell, then President & CEO of Philip Morris. To be clear they said it was not addictive to their knowledge - they did not make scientific statements, but rather offered their personal insight.

In February 1996, 60 Minutes finally aired the Wigand interview, where Wigand talks about his work inside B&W.

Taken from the 60 Minutes interview:

"Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] - They were looking to reduce the hazards within cigarettes, reduce the carcinogenic components or the list of the carcinogens that were within the tobacco products.

- Wallace: They talked about carcinogens too?

- Wigand: They talked about carcinogens."

Later he says that the idea of a safer cigarette was later dismissed. And that glycerol, one harmless ingredient, changes its chemistry when burned, forming a substance called acrolein, which acts like a carcinogen.

Wigand sent a memo to B&W president, indicating that he could not in conscience continue with coumarin in a product that they now knew and had documentation was a lung-specific carcinogen.

"- Wigand: I sent the document forward to Sandefur. I was told that we would continue working on a substitute and we weren't going to remove it because it would impact sales and that, that was his decision."