Lorillard Tobacco Company
 |
|
| Public | |
| Industry | Tobacco |
| Fate | Purchased by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company/Reynolds American |
| Founded | 1760, in New York, America |
| Defunct | 2015 |
| Headquarters | Greensboro, N.C., U.S. |
|
Key people
|
Murray S. Kessler (Chairman, President and CEO) |
| Revenue |
 $6.46 billion USD (2011) |
|
$1.89 billion USD (2011) |
|
|
$1.11 billion USD (2011) |
|
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Number of employees
|
2,800 (2011) |
| Website | www |
Lorillard Tobacco Company was an American tobacco company marketing cigarettes under the brand names Newport, Maverick, Old Gold, Kent, True, Satin, and Max.
The company is named for Pierre Abraham Lorillard, who founded the company in 1760. In 1899, the American Tobacco Company organized a New Jersey corporation, called the Continental Tobacco Company, that took a controlling interest in many small tobacco companies. By 1910, James Buchanan Duke controlled Lorillard and the American Tobacco Company even as it kept its original name. In 1911, the U.S. Court of Appeals found the American Tobacco Company "in restraint of trade," and issued a Dissolution Decree to the American Tobacco Company, which created the opportunity for Lorillard to become an independent company again.
In 1925, Lorillard experienced great transition as Benjamin Lloyd Belt became president. Having been with the company since 1911, Belt made some decisions that made the company profitable. He began to prioritize on promoting the Old Gold brand instead of Beech-Nut chewing tobacco, using such tactics as Old Gold on Broadway and sponsoring "Old Gold Presents Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra" which was a weekly hour-long show on Tuesdays nights over CBS from station WABC in New York. The Whiteman Hour had its first broadcast on February 5, 1929 and continued until May 6, 1930. When the Whiteman band went to Hollywood in mid-1929 to make the film King of Jazz, Old Gold leased a special eight coach train to take Whiteman and his entourage to the West Coast. The train stopped at sixteen cities across the nation. Old Gold later sponsored Artie Shaw's Tuesday night "Melody and Madness" program on CBS Radio from November 20, 1938 until November 14, 1939. Belt was still president when he died in 1937.
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Wikipedia