AMERICAN CIGAR SMOKERS IN EUROPEAN HANDS

Major U.S. cigar companies are mostly owned by Europeans . . . for now!

Los Angeles, February 2 – The recent news that the Danish Skandinavisk Tabakskompagni acquired Nashville, Tennessee-based C.A.O. International through its wholly-owned subsidiary ST Cigar Group was only the latest in a continuing trend of European acquisition of the American cigar industry.

That ST Cigar Group – best known for its top-selling brand, Henri Wintermans – bought C.A.O. was not a shocker. The two companies had been working together since 2004 when an ST Cigar Group company began distributing C.A.O. cigars in Great Britain.

But the purchase now places most of the top U.S. cigar distribution companies in European hands, a trend which is likely to continue. Until the Cigar Boom of the mid-1990s, almost all of the major cigar distributors serving the U.S. market were American owned. That changed quickly toward the end of the decade:............

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