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Japan Tobacco Inc. said the country’s government will sell its stake in the company “eventually” as Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama may want to raise funds to stem rising public debt.
“What we hear is that they think about privatization, which includes us,” Japan Tobacco’s executive deputy president Munetaka Takeda told a briefing in London today. “So, eventually it’s likely to happen.”
Japan’s government owns 50.01 percent of the cigarette maker, having sold shares three times since the company was founded in 1985. Most recently, the state sold a 14.5 percent stake in June 2004. Public debt in Japan is approaching twice the size of gross domestic product, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
“The government will look cautiously at the stock market, so it’s unlikely there’ll be a sale overnight or tomorrow, nor will they dispose of everything at once,” Takeda said.
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A deadline for lawsuits seeking to recoup smokers’ health-care costs from a Japan Tobacco Inc. unit that had been sought by British Columbia, Ontario and New Brunswick was rejected by a judge for coming prematurely.
The Canadian provinces want their claims for treating people with smoking-related illnesses included among those of creditors for Japan Tobacco’s insolvent JTI-MacDonald unit. The provinces said they feared nothing would remain if JTI settled a federal lawsuit that seeks to recover lost taxes from cigarette smuggling in the 1990s.
Ontario Superior Court Judge Peter Cumming called the request premature in an Oct. 30 ruling. The provinces may challenge the company’s plan to exit bankruptcy when it is submitted, the judge said.
“There is no plan of arrangement being put forth or even seen at this point on the distant horizon,” Cumming wrote.
Japan's new administration is considering raising cigarette taxes to European levels to help pay for an ambitious domestic spending plan, in a potential threat to partially state-owned Japan Tobacco Inc.
Shares of Japan Tobacco—the world's third largest cigarette company by sales volume, after Altria Group Inc. of the U.S. and British American Tobacco PLC of the U.K.—fell more than 4% Monday before recovering and ending down 0.9% to 254,300 yen, or $2,824.93.
The sharp moves followed comments Sunday by a top Japanese health official during a television interview that raised the possibility of the tax increase.
"Tobacco poses health problems. It may be necessary to raise [the tobacco tax] to the levels in Europe," said Akira Nagatsuma, minister of health, labor and welfare.
The health ministry already has asked the government's tax panel to increase the tobacco tax as part of tax reforms for fiscal 2010.
Japan Tobacco Inc., the world’s third-largest publicly traded cigarette maker, raised its full- year profit forecast 8 percent on projected currency gains and increasing market share for brands including Camel and Winston.
Net income may be 108 billion yen ($1.2 billion) for the year ending March, compared with its previous estimate of 100 billion yen, the company said in a statement today. Annual sales may total 6.09 trillion yen, compared with its previous forecast of 6 trillion yen.
“We are changing our forecast mainly because we have changed our exchange-rate assumptions,” Executive Deputy President Munetaka Takeda said in a briefing in Tokyo today.
The maker of Mild Seven cigarettes seeks to boost overseas sales as a declining smoking rate shrinks its home market.
Canadian provinces, seeking more than C$80 billion ($76 billion) from tobacco companies for treatment of smoking-related illnesses, are attempting to improperly use the bankruptcy process to force Japan Tobacco Inc.’s JTI-MacDonald unit to settle, a company lawyer said.
“The strategy is to force JTI into an expedited settlement,” David Scott, a lawyer for the tobacco company, told Superior Court Judge Peter Cumming in Toronto today. “It’s a lever to force JTI to settle these health-care claims.”
JTI-MacDonald, the maker of Export A cigarettes in Canada, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004, after a Quebec judge ordered the company to pay C$1.4 billion that the province claims it lost in taxes when tobacco companies exported cigarettes to the U.S. in the 1990s, knowing they would be smuggled back into Canada for resale on the black market.
British Columbia, Ontario and New Brunswick today asked Cumming to put a time limit on new lawsuits seeking to recoup health-care costs from JTI-MacDonald and allow their claims to be included in the company’s restructuring process. The request put the provinces at odds with the federal government, which sided with the tobacco company and urged the judge to either dismiss it or put it on hold indefinitely.
Further to the comments of Japan Tobacco International's Daniel Torras (Letters, 17 September), the Canadian province of Saskatchewan has had seven years' experience with a retail display ban.
A government survey shows our youth smoking rate has decreased from 29 per cent in 2002 to 20 per cent in 2008. All parties supported this and other measures, and the law has had good public support. Ex-smokers also say it is easier to resist the temptation to resume smoking when not faced with tobacco displays.
The negative economic impact claimed by the tobacco industry and others has not happened. Neither has there been an increase in smuggling.
We commend the Scottish Government for putting the interests of Scotland's children first. Please ignore the fear-mongering of an industry that is only interested in garnering new customers. It will fight to keep its product in front of the next generation of smokers – the children and youth of Scotland.
TOBACCO bosses have been slammed for “marketing death” by using beautiful young women dressed in orange satin jump suits to sell their product in busy bars.
Young women, carrying trays reminiscent of those used by ice cream vendors at cinemas, have been going into pubs selling cigarettes.
The pubs involved, which include the Centurion bar in Newcastle city centre, allow the girls into the bar in return for a small amount in commission for each packet sold.
The sales tactic was blasted by Ailsa Rutter, Director of Fresh – the campaign for a smoke-free North East.
She said: “What this is doing is glamorising the most lethal consumer product known.
“The last thing we need is the blatant promotion of cigarettes, which are the region’s biggest killer.
“There needs to be more regulation of an industry which is basically marketing death.”
Customers in the bar were approached by girls selling Benson and Hedges cigarettes on special offer – two packets for £6.
The percentage of smokers in Japan has fallen below a quarter of the adult population for the first time, with both men and women lighting up less, according to the results of a nationwide survey released Friday by Japan Tobacco Inc. (2914.TO).
In the annual survey, carried out in May by the world's third-largest tobacco producer by volume, 24.9% of respondents considered themselves to be smokers. The result is lower than last year's figure of 25.7%, and marks the lowest level since the company, known as JT, started compiling such data in 1965.
Japan had long been considered a smokers' paradise, with smoking rates hitting a peak of 49.4% in 1966. But the country has experienced a gradual decline in the number of smokers, due in part to an aging population, increased health consciousness and more stringent smoking regulations.
With slowing sales in Japan keeping a lid on revenue, JT is looking to gain a greater share of growing markets such as Russia and the Middle East
YOKOHAMA, JAPAN -- One plaintiff is a cancer patient. Another is represented by his widow. The third, has emphysema and rolls into the courtroom on a wheelchair with tubes trailing out of his nose.
The three Japanese are waging a minnow-vs.-whale battle against Big Tobacco in one of the world's most smoker-friendly countries. But precedent suggests they're likely to lose, and they hope their suit will at least draw attention to the dangers of smoking.
Even if they win, they're unlikely to dent the finances of Japan Tobacco Inc., a former monopoly still half-owned by the government. The three are asking for a total of 30 million yen ($320,000) from a company with 6.8 trillion yen ($72.8 billion) a year in sales.
Their larger goal, they say, is to gain stronger curbs on tobacco, and legal and social acceptance of a notion that much of the world now takes for granted: that smoking makes you sick.
They have a long way to go. . . .
The lawsuit demands sterner warning labels on cigarettes, a ban on cigarette vending machines, and an acknowledgment that smoking is addictive and harmful.
"When I began smoking, about 80 percent of men were smokers," Mizuno said. "The advertising phrase was, 'You're healthy when a cigarette tastes so good."'
When I began smoking, about 80 percent of men were smokers. The advertising phrase was, 'You're healthy when a cigarette tastes so good.'Masanobu Mizuno, one of the plaintiffs in the 4 1/2 year old suit against Japan Tobacco. Arguments have concluded; a decision is due by Jan. 20, 2010.
Japan Tobacco Inc., the world’s third-largest publicly traded cigarette maker, said first- quarter operating profit plunged 24 percent as domestic sales dropped and the yen gained.
Operating profit fell to 84.3 billion yen ($887 million) for the three months ended June from 110.5 billion yen a year earlier, the Tokyo-based company said in a statement today. Sales slipped 15 percent to 1.46 trillion yen from 1.72 trillion yen.
The maker of Camel and Mild Seven cigarettes is losing sales in Japan as the smoking rate falls and tighter tobacco controls are introduced. The yen’s rise against the dollar and other currencies eroded gains from overseas cigarette sales helped by the 2007 takeover of U.K.-based Gallaher Group Plc.
“Japan Tobacco was among victims by the global recession,” said Mitsuo Shimizu, an analyst at Tokyo-based Cosmo Securities Co. “It needs to seek growth outside Japan, which makes it more vulnerable to currency swings.”
The Tobacco Institute of Japan, the industry body of tobacco manufacturers, has turned over vending machine use logs on cigarette pack purchases by certain individual smokers to public prosecutors when they requested such information for investigative purposes, informed sources said Sunday. Such logs of ''taspo'' smart cards included records on when and at which vending machines the smokers bought cigarette packs, as well as their dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers, the sources said.
There has been a case in which the provided logs helped investigators find a person who had evaded some fines, the sources said. . . .
An institute official told Kyodo News, ''We have kept track of purchases-related logs to check if taspo cards that were stolen or for which reports of loss have been filed may have been used illicitly, and we basically would not provide them to third parties.''
''But we cannot help turning over such logs as well as the addresses, names, dates of birth and contacts of cardholders to investigative authorities as necessary if the authorities request the logs in writing in line with the Code of Criminal Procedure,'' the official said.
garettes -- at $1.05 per pack -- making the country a bonanza for smugglers, whether by glider or more mundane pathways on the ground. Cars and trucks filled with Ukrainian-made Marlboros and Viceroys get waved through border checkpoints by customs guards who seem more than eager to accommodate, for a price. Loads also move by bus and train, bound for other European countries where high taxes make packs cost as much as $5 (Germany) or $10 (United Kingdom).
The backbone of this underground commerce -- the acquisition of the cigarettes themselves -- is by far the easiest part of the entire operation. The world's four leading multinational tobacco companies, Philip Morris International, Japan Tobacco International (JTI), Imperial Tobacco, and British American Tobacco (BAT), have produced billions of excess cigarettes in Ukraine, fueling a teeming black market that reaches across the European Union. Today, Ukraine is rivaled only by Russia as the top source of non-counterfeit brand cigarettes smuggled to Europe, EU officials say.
The booming trade in tobacco smuggling has major consequences, say industry experts. The growing traffic pushes huge supplies of cheap, untaxed, and unregulated cigarettes into the rest of Europe, undercutting otherwise successful attempts to curtail smoking. Worse, officials say, the trade is boosting organized crime gangs, who find the soft penalties and big profits hard to resist. . . .
Attracted by high smoking rates and the potential for rapid returns on investments, multinational tobacco companies rushed to acquire the state-run cigarette factories after the Soviet regime collapsed in 1991. Today, the big four tobacco companies -- Philip Morris, BAT, JTI, and Imperial -- control 99 percent of the Ukrainian cigarette market.
Ton Wurtz, treasurer of the foundation 'Red de kleine horecaondernemer' (Save the small hospitality entrepreneur), has admitted to receiving "about 50,000 euros per year" from the tobacco companies. Wurtz also holds biweekly strategy talks with Willem Jan Roelofs, the chairman of the cigarette industry foundation SSI, he said.
Smoking was banned in cafes, bars, hotels and restaurants in The Netherlands a year ago. Just before the ban went into effect on July 1, 2008, Wurtz, who has been the spokesperson for a foundation that stands up for smokers since 1993, and other seasoned tobacco lobbyists established the foundation to represent the interests of small cafe owners.
The smoking ban was primarily adopted to guarantee the right of employees to work in a smoke-free environment. But critics say small bars, with no employees except the owners, should be exempt from the ban. Several court cases are underway against cafes that defied the ban.
The law firm representing the small cafe owners has been negotiating with the tobacco industry about the possibility of it bankrolling future lawsuits challenging the smoking ban. . . .
"We are talking to several parties about financing a procedure, SSI amongst them," Marco Gerritsen of the Van Diepen Van der Kroef law firm confirmed. "They haven't promised anything yet."
SSI's is a collaboration between British American Tobacco (Pall Mall), Imperial Tobacco (Gauloises) and Japan Tobacco International (Camel); Philip Morris (Marlboro) left the group in 2005. Tobacco companies fear a decline of 5 percent of sales because of the smoking ban in bars. Roelofs: "That is a substantial loss in an already contracting market." He denied the SSI has any intention to finance future court cases.
We've written before about Taspo, the RFID-chipped ID card that allows "of age" (20 or older) smokers to get their smokes through any of the nations 420,000 tobacco vending machines. Mostly the campaign has been a disaster for folks who own vending machines, a boom for convenience stores (where you don't need the cards), and and a burden for smokers who just want to buy a pack without registering themselves with Big Brother. . . .
Going by purely anecdotal evidence and personal experience, even the heaviest smokers want nothing to do with the card. For most, however, it's not a privacy issue, but one of pride: They don't want an official "smoking license", complete with a picture of themselves, to buy something that is their choice. In order to protect a small minority (teenagers) the rest of society must bear the burden of Taspo.
If tobacco makers are actually interested in selling their products and not just submitting to what will surely become complete regulation, they would be embracing vending machines with facial recognition, rather than making their customers file with the authorities. Of course, facial recognition doesn't always work, but it's a relatively non-invasive way to solve a problem that isn't such a big deal to begin with.
In the meantime, convenience stores should beware: Increased sales in your sector mean that you're next on the chopping block. Expect a full-on Taspo reader integrated into cash registers in no time.
Japan Tobacco Inc., the world’s third-largest publicly traded cigarette maker, forecast profit will fall 19 percent this year as fewer people smoke in its home market and currency movements hurt its international earnings.
Net income is forecast to be 100 billion yen ($1 billion) in the 12 months ending March 2010 from 123.4 billion yen last year, the company said in a statement to Tokyo’s stock exchange today. That compares with the 163 billion yen median estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
The maker of Camel and Mild Seven cigarettes is losing sales in Japan as the smoking rate falls and authorities introduce tighter tobacco controls. Earnings from surging overseas cigarette sales, helped by the 2007 takeover of U.K.- based Gallaher Group Plc, are being blunted by the strengthening of the yen against other currencies. . . .
Overseas tobacco revenue rose 18 percent to 3.12 trillion yen in the year to December on higher sales of Winston and Camel cigarettes in counties including Russia, Italy and Spain.