Jump to full article: Financial Times (uk), 2008-10-26
Author: Pan Kwan Yuk
Intro: An avid art collector, also owns other camel paintings by Chinese contemporary artist Zhou Tiehai, including Joe Camel as Mona Lisa which hangs in his private dining room.
But it is the sly subversion of the iconic Marlboro image in his office that best hints at the scale of Pierre de Labouchere’s ambitions for Japan Tobacco, the world’s third-biggest publicly listed cigarette maker.
“Our goal is to overtake PMI as the industry’s number one,” says Mr de Labouchere with a laugh. “So yes, I guess you can say there’s a subliminal message there [in the painting].”
As the head of a division that has been the main driver of profit growth for JT over the past four years, the 54-year old Frenchman has reasons to be ebullient.
JT, which also owns food and pharmaceuticals businesses, still has some way to go before it topples PMI . . .
But the challenge for Mr de Labouchere will be whether he can internationalise any of Gallaher’s brands – most of which are relatively local in nature - in the same way he has with Winston.
No less important is how trading in Russia - now its largest market by volume and second-largest by profit - will be affected by the fallout from the market turmoil.
In the longer term, JTI still faces gaps in its portfolio, notably in Asia and Africa, and particularly in Latin America - a situation Mr de Labouchere says he would like to remedy.
“At the moment our priority is to combine Gallaher into JTI’s existing operations,”
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