R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings

▪ American company

      American manufacturer of tobacco products. The origins of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company date to the post-Civil War era, when Richard Joshua Reynolds (1850–1918) began trading in tobacco, first in his native Virginia and then in Winston, North Carolina, where in 1875 he established his first plug factory. In 1899 the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was incorporated, with Reynolds as president. The following year it entered the giant tobacco trust that came to be called the American Tobacco Company. In 1911 the trust was dissolved by the U.S. Court of Appeals, and Reynolds Tobacco Company again became independent. In 1906 the company introduced the popular Prince Albert pipe tobacco. In 1913 it introduced a new cigarette, a blend of American and Turkish tobaccos, called Camel. Winston filter tips went on sale in 1954, and Salem, the first filter-tipped menthol cigarette, was introduced in 1956.

      The company began to diversify in the 1960s, acquiring chiefly food and oil concerns, and the tobacco business became a subsidiary of R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc., in 1970. In 1985 R.J. Reynolds Industries acquired Nabisco Brands, Inc., and in 1989 Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) acquired the new firm, RJR Nabisco, for $25 billion. The transaction was the largest leveraged buyout to date. After two years under private ownership, the shares were returned to the market, and KKR divested its remaining shares of RJR Nabisco in 1995. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings was spun off from RJR Nabisco in 1999. At the time Nabisco sold food products in more than 80 countries. Nabisco was acquired in December 2000 by Philip Morris Companies (renamed Altria Group), which integrated Nabisco's operations with another Philip Morris subsidiary, Kraft Foods (Kraft Foods Inc.).

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