User:SimonDes/sandbox

Philip Morris International Inc. (PMI) (nyse: PM) is an American global cigarette and tobacco company. PMI is one of the largest publicly traded tobacco companies in the world, with nearly 813 billion cigarettes sold in over 180 countries in 2016. It owns six of the 15 most traded brands in the world, the most recognized and best selling of them being Marlboro.

Heir to a lone London tobacconist who started his business in 1847, Philip Morris International was an operating company of Altria Group until it was spun-off in March 2008. Altria explained the split, arguing PMI would have more "freedom" outside the constraints of US corporate ownership in terms of potential litigation and legislative restrictions to "pursue sales growth in emerging markets", while Altria focused on the United States. As a consequence, PMI does not operate in the United States, with Philip Morris brands there still owned by its former sister company Philip Morris USA. PMI's operational headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland, although the corporate headquarters remain in New York City.

Because tobacco, the main constituent of cigarettes, is the single greatest cause of preventable death globally and is addictive, the company's operations (and its competitors') are highly controversial and are increasingly the subject of litigation and restrictive legislation from governments concerned about the health impacts of its products.

Philip Morris is a long-term main sponsor of the Scuderia Ferrari Formula One team.

Early years
The company traces its history to a London tobacconist's, Philip Morris, 1847 opening of a single shop on London’s Bond Street. The shop enjoys increased popularity after the Crimean War, where Turkish tobacco had become popular among returning soldiers who had begun to replace pipe tobacco and cigars with cigarettes: Morris soon started to hire more employees to hand-roll them. Upon Morris' death in 1873, his widow Margaret runs the business along with his brother Leopold; the latter becomes sole owner in 1880 and soon set up a partnership with Joseph Grunebaum: Philip Morris & Company and Grunebaum, Ltd., is formally incorporated in 1881, with a public offering more than six times oversubscribed. The company becomes simply Philip Morris & Co., Ltd., when the partnership dissolves in 1885. High in debt, it is purchased by one of its creditors, William Curtis Thomson, in 1894.

In 1902, King Edward, a long-time familiar of the shop, appoints Philip Morris as royal tobacconist: under this favourable patronage, business is brisk. The same year, the company is incorporated in the United States by Gustav Eckmeyer, who had been its sole importer and distributor in the New World since 1872. Ownership is shared between Eckmeyer and the parent company, and the venture begins selling its first indigenous brands along with its tradiitonal luxury imports (among which Marlborough, named after one of the London manufactories located on Marlborough street, in London ).

Becoming an American company
1919 turns out to be a crucial year: the American subsidiary is bought by investor Georges Whelan and incorporated in Virginia under the name of Philip Morris & Co., Ltd. Inc. The company's coronet logo is also created at that time. With Turkish tobacco falling out of fashion and its brands sitting firmly in the luxury and premium segments, total sales account for as little as 0.5% of the total cigarette market in 1925.

Things improve under the leadership of Reuben Ellis, a recent transfer from Whelan's other tobacco interests. A new factory is opened in Richmond and new brands are launched or repositioned: among them, Marlborough sheds three letters in 1924 and is relaunched as a premium cigarette for the growing female market. As his boss' empire crumbles in the 1929 crash, Ellis pruchases the company for himself.

In 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression, then-flagship Philip Morris moves to a more popular segment, trading at 15 cents a pack instead of 25, enlisting the help of bellboy Johnny Roventini and his famous "Call for Philip Morris". Success is immediate, but dragged by a general price war among major tobacco manufacturers, the company's best seller remains Paul Jones, a low-cost brand at 10 cents a pack. At the same time, with the Roosevelt administration stepping in to help struggling tobacco farmers and threatening to impose government prices, manufacturers have no choice but to subscribe to the Agricultural Adjustement Act: by 1936 leaf prices had doubled, Reuben Ellis was dead and margins had all but disappeared.

The company emerges from WWII has a distant fourth in terms of market share: sales were up but still driven by cheap Paul Jones, whose attractiveness was declining in a full-employment economy; whatever profits that were to be made came from the company's namesake brand, at 15 cents a pack. But the end of the war -and with it the end of rationing and scarcity- brings an unexpected consequence: hoarding had become pointless, just as U.S. military orders also dropped substantially. To compound the problem, the new president Al Lyon had made a choice to remove the cellophane wrapping from the packs so as to accelerate shipments. While this was not a problem when demand was higher than supply, in a society of renewed abundance this meant a longer time spent on shelves and, as a consequence, a merchandise that would become stale far quicker than its competitors. With inventory returns and an ill-advised attempt at re-packaging old boxes, factories end 1945 getting more returns than they were shipping. The situation finally comes back to normal, particularly with the onboarding of Oliver McComas, a banker who during his time at Bankers Trust had both Philip Morris and Lehman Brothers: at the urging of the latter, he is hired by the former at the end of 1946. McComas imposes stricter financial controls; downsizes staff and improves compensations for those who remain; coordination between sales and production is dramatically improved; and a younger management team quickly emerges at the New York headquarters.

Advent of the Marlboro Man
Philip Morris' -the brand- advertisment had by then become tired, and Federal lawsuits brought against the brand's sweeping claims (driven by the use of diethylene glycol instead of glycerol as a humectant to reduce throat irritation) did not help: by the time the matter was settled with the Federal Trade Commission, Philip Morris had long dropped them, but Pall Mall had also surpassed it as the fourth best-selling brand.

In the early 1950's, growing concerns about the health effects of cigarettes prompt most manufacturers to equip them with filters: by the end of 1954, filtered brands had taken up more than 10 percent of sales volumes. To enter this market, Philip Morris' executives first decide to purchase Benson & Hedges in 1954, which had pioneered the market with its Parliament s: but the brand loses nearly 10% of its market share under the new management. They then move to rebrand a premium yet stagnant brand from their portfolio: Marlboro, while traditionnally associated with female smokers, had a suitably male ring to its name, and surveys had shown it to benefit from a generally positive image. George Weissman, the new vice-president for marketing and new products, signs up young and upcoming Leo Burnett to the task. The agency's challenge was to appeal to male smokers that were concerned enough about their health to consider switching to filter cigarettes, yet found these too "girlie" and lacking in taste. The blend is reworked to become more flavourful, and a new flip-top box is used as packaging, along with a completely reworked logo design - from the shape of the letters to the "roof-top", whose simple shape could be recognized on black-and-white television, regardless of distortion. The old "Mild as May" slogan is also replaced with a decidedly manlier "Delivers the good on flavour", and supported by a series of Marlboro Men: over the years the brand will vary the figure of its representative (initially dubbed as "tatooed man" and often taken from the company's own ranks or their friends). Be it with a sailor, soldier, racecar driver or cowboy, the campaign is a success: within a month of it test-marketing in New York City, the brand reaches the top-selling position. Within a year of its national roll-out, volumes increased an extraordinary 3,200%, bringing it almost immediately to the fourth best-selling rank.

Becoming an international giant
Increasing sales drive the company's expansion: in 1954, Philip Morris Australia becomes the first international affiliate of the company. In 1957, the Swiss Fabriques de Tabac Réunies in Neuchatel are in turn the first to gain foreign licensing rights to produce the booming Marlboro (and the first European foray for the company since it left Britain), before being entirely purchased in 1963. The overseas division is renamed Philip Morris International in 1961, along with Philip Morris Domestic and Philip Morris Industrial.

Riding the wave of 1960's Hollywood Western movies that help popularize around the world the brand's "working-class frontier rebel" appeal (the Marlboro theme is taken from Elmer Bernstein's soundtrack of The Magnificent Seven), the company expands dramatically over the decade: by 1965, Philip Morris products are available in 140 countries and territories. Domestically, Marlboro had become the leading brand in the United States in 1972, but it takes until the early-1980s for Philip Morris to become the country's largest cigarette maker.

The company also pursues a string of international partnerships with local monopolies, so much so thatits products reach consumers in more than 170 countries and territories by 1980. The fall of the USSR in the early 1990's provides for yet another expansion opportunity, and Philip Morris International -which had been incorporated as an operating company of Philip Morris, Inc. in 1987 - is often found to be one of the first US companies to operate in the former Communist bloc. In 1990, a full two years before actually opening an office in the country, PMI accepts an oil for cigarettes deal with the failing Soviet state to help it deal with cigarette shortages,. PMI is also one of the first US entrant on the Vietnamese market, opening a manufacturing plant a few months before the two countries normalize their relations.

By the mid-60s the company had also started constituting an horizontal conglomerate, gradually purchasing various entities such as Miller brewing (1968), Seven-Up (1978), Kraft Foods (1988) and many others. By the early 90's, Philip Morris has significant market shares in various chocolate, beer, and coffee markets around the world. The importance of Philip Morris across the consumer products industry materializes on 2 April 1993, when the company suddendly slashes the price of its flagship brand by 20%, in an attempt to stave off increasing competition from generic cigarettes: Marlboro Friday, as it became known, sees the company's stock drop by 26% within a day, with others such as The Coca-Cola Company, Procter & Gamble or Disney taking large losses as well as many investors start to believe that brands are not such a valuable equity anymore.



PMI as an independent entity
On 27 January 2003 Philip Morris Companies Inc. changes its name to Altria. The conglomerate then gradually refocuses its operations, selling off large parts of its non-tobacco consumer products holdings: Kraft Foods Inc. is spun off in March 2007, with the company's 88.1% stake being distributed to Altria shareholders. The same year, Altria begins the process of spinning off Philip Morris International in order to let it pursue growth opportunities abroad without the legal uncertainties stemming from its US arm. Altria shareholders are given shares in PMI, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and other stock exchanges. Under the separation agreements, both companies share brand ownership but can not compete in each other's markets: Philip Morris USA remains in the US, while PMI is free to operate in the rest of the world. Louis Camilleri, who had been Altria's CEO, becomes PMI's new Chief Executive.

The newly-independent entity remains incorporated in New York, but its operational center is in Lausanne, Switzerland. The company pursues its expansion across the world, and eventhough cigarette sales are declining across most markets, it sold more than 800 billion units in 2016. It also aggressively engaged in a research and development effort to develop potentially "Reduced-risk products". After trying a joint-venture with Swedish Match to market snus (2009-2015), the company launches IQOS in 2014, a heated tobacco product with significantly reduced emissions. In light of the product's success in Japan and other markets, PMI announces in late 2016 that it intends to release other similar platforms and aims to move away from combustible tobacco products in the long term.

Brands
Philip Morris international owns six of the 15 largest international brands, and its products can be found in 180 different markets, making it the largest privately-owned tobacco product manufacturer in the world with an estimated global market share of approximately 15% in 2016 : Then come as 11th, 12th and 13th largest brands, respectively, with shipments approximating 45 billion units in 2016. Philip Morris's historical and namesake brand closes the march as the 15th largest international volume, at 36 billion cigarettes sold in 2016 in 40 countries. Other notable international brands include Virginia Slims, Muratti or Merit. The company also markets IQOS, a heated tobacco product, as well as Solaris, an electronic cigarette.
 * Marlboro: the world's largest international brand. With more than 280 billion units sold in 2016, the brand accounts for about a third of PMI's volumes and sells more than the next two largest brands combined ;
 * L&M: the third best-selling brand in the world (outside the US and China), with 97 billion units sold in 2016;
 * Parliament;
 * Bond Street; and
 * Chesterfield;

PMI owns several more local, "heritage" brands that it acquired through the years and are generally tied to a specific market (e.g. Australia's Longbeach or former East-Germany's f6). In Indonesia, for instance, the 2005 acquisition of P.T. Sampoerna led it to gradually become the country's largest tobacco manufacturer. Contrary to most markets, the subsidiary is specialized in kreteks, with brands like Djim Sam Soe 234 leading sales volumes.

The company also shares a number of brand names with some of its competitors, usually for historical reasons. The Marlboro trademark, for instance, is owned in Canada by Imperial Tobacco Canada (itself a subsidiary of British American Tobacco rather than Imperial Brands) as the original local licensor was incorporated into the British giant. As a consequence, the packs are sold as a semi-unbranded item with no name but the distinguishable rooftop design created in the 1950s.

R&D
While the company has acknowledged for several years that "cigarettes are a dangerous product, and the best way to avoid the harms of smoking is never to start, or to quit", PMI also engages in an extensive research and development program aimed at developing reduced-risk alternatives to combustible products, investing more than $3 billion into the development of new, non-combustible products. In 2008 PMI opened its main R&D centre, the Cube, on the shores of Lake Neuchatel where the Fabrique de Tabac Réunies once stood, with another, smaller facility in Singapore.

The company focuses on two avenues of research: electronic cigarettes and vapour-based products on the one hand, and heated tobacco products on the other. So far, the most extensive and most successful project is IQOS, a handheld device that heats, rather than burns, tobacco. While the company's data points at a substantial reduction in the level of harmful chemicals compared to cigarette smoke, there is yet no independent scientific evidence of IQOS' long-term effects on health.

Board of Directors
The Board of Directors is the company's governing body. As of April 2017, its members were: Louis Camilleri assumed the position of chairman and Chief executive officer of Philip Morris International after its spin-off from Altria, while Andre Calantzopoulos acted as its Chief operating officer. Calantzopoulos was appointed CEO and elected to the Board in May 2013, with Louis Camilleri remaining Chairman.
 * Harold Brown
 * André Calantzopoulos, CEO
 * Louis C. Camilleri – Chairman
 * Massimo Ferragano
 * Werner Geissler
 * Jennifer Li
 * Jun Makihara
 * Sergio Marchionne
 * Kalpana Morparia
 * Lucio A. Noto
 * Frederik Paulsen Jr
 * Robert B. Polet
 * Stephen M. Wolf

Shareholders
Institutional ownership represented 71.87% of all available shares at the end of 2016. The most significant shareholders of Philip Morris International are The Vanguard Group, Capital Research Global Investors and Capital World Investors with 6.75%, 4.75% and 4.47% of total share capital respectively.

Controversies and public health disputes
In 2010, the company lobbied against Uruguay's strong anti-smoking laws and filed a complaint against the country (Philip Morris v. Uruguay) under the Switzerland-Uruguay bilateral investment treaty. On July 8, 2016, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes ruled in favour of Uruguay.

The Australian Government announced it would introduce 'Tobacco Plain Packaging Laws' on April 29, 2010. Philip Morris International (PMI), arranged for its wholly owned Hong Kong subsidiary Philip Morris Asia (PMA) to 'takeover' two Australian subsidiaries - Philip Morris Australia Limited and Philip Morris Limited on February 23, 2011. In June 2011, Philip Morris International announced it was using ISDS provisions in the Australia-Hong Kong Bilateral Investment treaty (BIT) to demand compensation for Australia's plain cigarette packaging anti-smoking legislation. It was one of several tobacco companies to launch legal action against the Australian Government. British American Tobacco, Philip Morris, Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International are taking the Australian government to the High Court of Australia to try to stop the elected government of Australia from introducing plain packaging for tobacco products. The government is doing this to lower the rate of deaths related to smoking.

Two challenges to the tobacco plain packaging legislation were heard by the High Court of Australia between 17–19 April 2012: British American Tobacco Australasia Limited and Ors v. Commonwealth of Australia and J T International SA v. Commonwealth of Australia.

On 15 August 2012, the High Court handed down orders for these matters, and found that the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 is not contrary to s 51(xxxi) of the Constitution. On 5 October 2012 the Court handed down its reasons for the decision. By a 6:1 majority (Heydon J in dissent) the Court held that there had been no acquisition of property that would have required provision of 'just terms' under s51(xxxi) of the Constitution.

On 18 December 2015 the Tribunal instituted by the United Nations Commission on International Trader Law (UNCITRAL)issued a unanimous decision (3-0) agreeing with Australia's position that the Tribunal has no jurisdiction to hear PMA's claim. This was due to the fact that PMI used its wholly owned subsidiary PMA to takeover the Australian-based PM subsidiaries in order to specifically sue the Australian Government for bringing in Plain Packaging laws. PMI was unable to do this itself as the Australia-United States FTA agreement signed in 2004 did not have any ISDS clauses included - by design.

The WTO's Dispute Settlement Body will issues its findings in 'late 2016'.

Philip Morris also sued Norway over the country's ban on displaying tobacco products in stores. It lost the case in 2012. In August 2014 the company foreshadowed legal action against the UK Government if it went ahead with plans to introduce plain packaging. In a submission to the government, Philip Morris International said it would seek compensation running into "billions of pounds," if the proposed legislation went ahead.

Philip Morris International has announced an overhaul of its human rights protections of tobacco workers in Kazakhstan and 30 other countries after critical reports.

The company runs a health information web site outlining the health issues of tobacco. However, it has been criticised as merely a "public relations effort" intended to "undermine public health".

In the 1930s, the company's tobacco advertisements were a steady source of income for numerous medical organizations and journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA (journal)).

In February 2015, John Oliver highlighted the company's many international legal cases on an episode of his television show Last Week Tonight. He also attempted to raise awareness for his campaign using the hashtag #JeffWeCan.

From the 1970s to the late 1990s, Phillip Morris along with British American Tobacco, was involved in campaigns to undermine bans against smoking in Muslim majority countries by branding Muslims who opposed smoking as a "'fundamentalist’ who wishes to return to sharia law," and be "a threat to existing government as” according to leaked documents. A 1985 report from Philip Morris squarely blamed the World Health Organization: “This ideological development has become a threat to our business because of the interference of the WHO … The WHO has not only joined forces with Moslem fundamentalists who view smoking as evil, but has gone yet further by encouraging religious leaders previously not active anti-smokers to take up the cause." Philip Morris has refused to comment on these findings.

Corporate Social Responsibiliy
Philip Morris International participates in the United Nations Global Compact and has for several years been listed in the Carbon Disclosure Project's A-list.

In 2016, it announced the launch of a $100 million initiative to combat illicit trade and smuggling through the funding of third-party projects. A council of experts recruited from the fields of law enforcement, anti-corruption, and the fight against organized crime and illegal trade are tasked with reviewing grant requests from government agencies, universities, NGOs, and private entities.

The company contributes approximately $30 million per year to various charitable causes worldwide, focusing on access to education, women empowerment, economic opportunity, as well as disaster preparedness and relief efforts.

Sports sponsorship
Philip Morris sponsored various sports event over the years, including football, Badminton, golf, cricket, road bicycle racing and ice hockey. As regulations regarding tobacco sponsorships tightened, this support has greatly reduced, leading some of the events it supported to cease altogether.

Philip Morris is a long-term main sponsor of Formula One team Scuderia Ferrari as well as MotoGP team Ducati. While all branding has nowadays disappeared from their livery, Marlboro-branded Ferrari and McLaren cars won several world titles with famous drivers such as Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher.