BRISTOL, England -- Imperial Tobacco Group Plc on said on Dec. 14 that it will drop the word “Tobacco” from its corporate name, reported Agence France Presse (AFP). The British tobacco company will be known as Imperial Brands from early next year.
"Subject to approval from our shareholders ... on 3 Feb. 2016, we will be changing the name of our parent company from Imperial Tobacco Group PLC to Imperial Brands PLC," said a statement obtained by the news agency.
"Imperial Brands better reflects the dynamic, brand-focused business that we are now," it said.
“Our business is built around great consumer brands,” the statement continued, according to a separate Bloomberg report. “Our growth and specialist brands are the key assets in our portfolio and we continue to focus on building the contribution they make to our volume and revenue development.”
The company said it will retain its five corporate brands. Those include Imperial Tobacco and the U.S. unit ITG Brands.
In late 2014, Imperial Tobacco announced that ITG Brands LLC would be the name of the company formed from its existing U.S. business (Commonwealth-Altadis) and its acquisition of brands and assets from Reynolds American Inc. and Lorillard Inc. Reynolds acquired Lorillard, the maker of the Newport cigarette brand, for $25.9 billion in June. It divested the KOOL, Salem, Winston, Maverick cigarette and blu eCigs brands to ITG Brands, Greensboro, N.C., for $7.1 billion.
Bristol, England-based Imperial Tobacco is a multi-national tobacco company with brands including Davidoff cigars, cigarettes and pipe tobaccos; West and Gauloises Blondes cigarettes; Montecristo cigars; Golden Virginia hand rolling tobacco; Drum fine-cut tobacco; Rizla rolling papers; and the Puritane e-cigarette brand. It operates in more than 160 markets.
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