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Imperial Tobacco says trading as expected  

Imperial Tobacco Plc, the world's fourth-biggest cigarette group, said on Wednesday it was trading in line with its expectations as the group moves towards the close of its half-year at the end of March.

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2nd UPDATE: Imperial Tobacco Says Current Trading In Line 

Imperial Tobacco PLC (ITY) said Wednesday that the trading performance of its core business as well as the recently acquired Altadis is currently in line with its expectations.

The company which recently completed the EUR12.6 billion purchase of Franco- Spanish rival Altadis said in a trading update that its performance for the year to Sept. 30 remains in line with management's forecasts.

"Furthermore, the operating performance of Altadis since completion of the acquisition on Jan. 25, 2008 has been in line with our expectations," it said.

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• Imperial Forecasts Costs of $281 Million on Altadis (Update3) 

Imperial Tobacco Group Plc, the maker of Davidoff and West cigarettes, said costs related to its takeover of Altadis SA will lop 140 million pounds ($281 million) from the current fiscal year's profit.

The expenses concern the value of inventory, elimination of inter-company sales and depreciation adjustments, Imperial said today in a statement. Sales are meeting its forecast so far in the year, according to the Bristol, England-based company. . . .

The western European cigarette market will shrink by 1 percent to 2 percent over coming years, Philip Morris International said yesterday. The contraction has slowed following smoking bans and tax increases that cut into consumption in past years, PMI executives said.

Tobacco use will kill 1 billion people this century, a 10- fold increase over the previous 100 years, unless governments in poor nations raise taxes on consumption and mandate health warnings, the World Health Organization said in February.

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Tobacco use will kill 1 billion people this century, a 10- fold increase over the previous 100 years, unless governments in poor nations raise taxes on consumption and mandate health warnings, the World Health Organization said in February.
Bloomberg story on Imperial's purchase of Altadis. It's unusual to see a purely business story also point out the health costs of tobacco.

Imperial Tobacco: Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Reason for Regime Change 

Imperial Tobacco's $15 billion takeover of Altadis already has looked pretty smart. Will it be even smarter now that Fidel Castro has resigned as the leader of Cuba?

If you had asked Altadis a year ago, the answer probably would have been yes. Altadis has the world's biggest share of cigar sales and owns a 50% stake in Cuba's state-owned Habanos SA, which makes Cohiba cigars. But Altadis can't sell those prized cigars in the U.S. because of the country's trade limits on Cuba. If Castro's successor--most likely his brother--is more favorable to U.S. officials, Altadis could be sitting on a gold mine. It already has 25% share of the cigar market, or about twice as much as its closest competitor.

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RLPC-Imperial Tobacco ups pricing on Altadis loan-bankers 

Imperial Tobacco increased pricing on the 9.2 billion pounds ($17.9 billion) financing backing its acquisition of Franco-Spanish cigarette maker Altadis (ALT.MC: Quote, Profile, Research) to take account of difficult loan market conditions before launching the deal to a wider syndication on Monday, banking sources close to the deal said.

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Imperial Tobacco calls for Altadis trade suspension from end-session Feb 11  

Imperial Tobacco said it has asked Spain's bourse regulator CNMV to suspend trading in Altadis SA shares from the end of the market session Feb 11 until the tobacco group is delisted.

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Imperial Tobacco seals Logista move 

Imperial Tobacco, owner of the Lambert & Butler, Davidoff and JPS cigarette brands, intends to buy the remaining shares it does not own in Logista, a Spanish logistics company, for about €910m (�675m).

Imperial acquired 59.62 per cent of the Spanish company when it bought Altadis, the Spanish maker of Gauloises and Gitanes cigarettes, a deal that was completed yesterday.

Gareth Davis, chief executive, said the company had to buy Madrid-based Logista because it would be too hard to find a bidder during a three-month deadline imposed by regulators.

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Imperial Tobacco Will Offer to Buy Rest of Logista (Update6) 

Imperial Tobacco Group Plc plans to pay 910 million euros ($1.3 billion) for the shares it doesn't own in Compania de Distribucion Integral Logista SA, Spain's largest cigarette distributor, after a takeover gave it a majority stake.

Imperial, Europe's second-biggest publicly traded cigarette maker, inherited its 59.6 percent stake in Logista after gaining control of Altadis SA in a 12.6 billion-euro bid. Chief Executive Officer Gareth Davis said it's buying Madrid-based Logista because it would be too hard to find a private-equity bidder during a three-month deadline imposed by regulators.

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Imperial Tobacco Will Offer to Buy Rest of Logista (Update6) 

Imperial Tobacco Group Plc plans to pay 910 million euros ($1.3 billion) for the shares it doesn't own in Compania de Distribucion Integral Logista SA, Spain's largest cigarette distributor, after a takeover gave it a majority stake.

Imperial, Europe's second-biggest publicly traded cigarette maker, inherited its 59.6 percent stake in Logista after gaining control of Altadis SA in a 12.6 billion-euro bid. Chief Executive Officer Gareth Davis said it's buying Madrid-based Logista because it would be too hard to find a private-equity bidder during a three-month deadline imposed by regulators.

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• Imperial Tobacco wins control of Altadis 

A new tobacco giant incorporating well-known brands Regal cigarettes and Montecristo cigars emerged Tuesday as Britain's Imperial Tobacco won control of Franco-Spanish peer Altadis.

Imperial said in a statement that Altadis shareholders overwhelmingly backed its takeover bid for Altadis worth 12.8 billion euros (18.8 billion dollars).

The takeover will create Europe's second-largest tobacco company, behind Altria Group's Philip Morris, making about 312 billion cigarettes a year.

The combination of the world's fourth and fifth biggest tobacco groups will bring together Imperial Tobacco brands Regal, Embassy and Davidoff, with Altadis' Montecristo and Gauloises.

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Imperial Tobacco weighing up Logista options 

Imperial Tobacco is unlikely to bid for Logista in order to prepare it for a full sale at a later date, a source with knowledge of the situation told mergermarket.

The UK tobacco company has said that it will announce what it will do with Logista, the Spanish logistics company, the day it announces the results of its takeover of its parent company Altadis, expected by 24 January.

Under Spanish takeover law, Imperial Tobacco has to reduce its stake below 30% or launch a full takeover bid within three months of that date. If anyone buys Altadis’s full 59.6% stake in Logista, they would have to launch a mandatory bid for the distribution company.

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Imperial extends Altadis offer period 

Britain's Imperial Tobacco Group Plc is extending its offer period for Franco-Spanish cigarette maker Altadis to January 18 to allow shareholders more time after the Christmas and New Year holiday.

The offer period had originally been set to run to January 11, but will be extended to the maximum of 70 days under Spanish takeover rules, or until January 20, but as that date is a Sunday the offer period will close on Friday Jan 18.

Imperial said on Tuesday it will not extend the acceptance period beyond January 18 unless a competing offer is filed with Spanish market regulator CNMV. The last day a competing offer can be filed is January 14.

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• Big Tobacco snuffs out secondhand smoke suits ($$) 

The tobacco industry, however, has escaped liability in 10 of 11 suits — the bulk of those involving actions filed by flight attendants — since 2001.

Last month, the industry racked up its latest victory in a series of lawsuits involving flight attendants who alleged that they developed cancer due to secondhand smoke on airplanes. The case was filed by a mother who claimed that her flight-attendant daughter developed lung cancer and died due to exposure to secondhand smoke on airplanes. Menchini v. R.J. Reynolds, No. 2000-20916-CA-01 (Miami-Dade Co., Fla., Cir. Ct.).

The Menchini case was the ninth flight-attendant case to go to trial since 2001. Juries have ruled in favor of the tobacco industry in seven of those cases, although a judge ordered a new trial in one of those cases. Another went against the industry, and yet another ended in a mistrial and was eventually dismissed.

"We are seeing increased victories . . . but the tobacco companies are the defendants here and they are certainly much more vigorous in their defense tactics than the defendants in the other types of secondhand smoke lawsuits," said Edward Sweda Jr., a senior attorney with the Tobacco Products Liability Project . . .

There are potentially hundreds more flight-attendant lawsuits awaiting trial, many of them stemming from a 1997 class action settlement that gave about 60,000 flight attendants the right to sue tobacco companies individually, Sweda noted. Broin v. Philip Morris, 641 So.2d 888 (Fla. 3d Ct. App.).

One Weston, Fla., law firm alone, Weinstein & Weinstein, has more than 300 flight-attendant cases still pending. . . .

Benjamine Reid of Tampa, Fla.-based Carlton Fields' Miami office, who was the lead lawyer for R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson in the Menchini case, said the flight-attendant cases are not about whether second-hand smoke causes illness. Rather the question is: Does secondhand smoke cause illness in a particular environment, in this case an airplane?

The answer is no, said Reid, who convinced the jury in the Menchini case that the amount of smoke in the aircraft was not enough to make someone sick, "and there are a number of studies to support this conclusion."

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Spain's Altadis raises cigarette prices 

Franco-Spanish tobacco company Altadis on Wednesday raised its cigarette prices by 0.10 euros a packet, Spain's official government bulletin reported.

A pack of Altadis' Fortuna and Nobel brands will now cost 2.50 euros, according to the government register.

The increase compares with a rise of between 5 and 25 cents in Altadis cigarette prices at the start of 2007.

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• Altadis revels, in private, on the mystique of smoking  

Only the select few can enter the online preserve of Altadis, the European tobacco giant. Inside, visitors find a parallel universe in which cigarette smoke takes the shape of a halo, willowy models strut down the runaway with cigarettes hanging from their pouty lips, and icons like Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt flaunt their smokes as symbols of rebellion.

Le Lab, an internal Web site at Altadis, is designed to be part social networking site, part data resource, part virtual pep rally. The target audience is several hundred Altadis brand managers who could use a little inspiration as cafés and restaurants around the world continue to shove users of its wares out the door.

The newest restrictions take effect Jan. 1, when France extends a nationwide ban on smoking in most public places to include bars, restaurants, nightclubs and the last hazy-blue bastion of French society: the café.

Instead of bemoaning its fate, Altadis - a hybrid of old state French and Spanish tobacco monopolies - has taken a cheeky approach to rally its troops as France has followed European smoking strongholds like Spain, Ireland, Italy and Sweden and parts of the United States that have enacted full or partial smoking bans.

The centerpiece of Le Lab is a series of 12 videos extolling the pleasures of smoking produced by the video artist Vincent Gagliostro, a transplanted New Yorker in Paris. . . .

Nicolas Villain, co-director of the CNCT, said that he assumed Altadis was doing everything it could to motivate its employees because he said his organization sometimes got calls from disgruntled workers in the cigarette industry.

"Going forward, of course they want to keep their employees from being depressed and they want to tell them that smoking is a normal thing," he said.

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I want the films to clarify and educate. In some ways it's like reintroducing smoking and what I came up with is responsible smoking. Responsible smoking is about co-existing really. It's about dialogue between smokers and nonsmokers.
Video artist Vincent Gagliostro, who created a series of 12 videos extolling the pleasures of smoking. The videos were produced by Altadis, which placed them on Le Lab, its protected website.