Two of the world’s largest tobacco companies, BAT Industries and Philip
Morris, are scouring the market for communications directors to head up
their international PR operations.
BAT Industries, which controls 250 cigarette brands including State
Express 555 and Lucky Strikes, and owns UK insurers Eagles Star and
Allied Dunbar, is believed to be headhunting a director of regional and
corporate affairs to lead its worldwide tobacco public relations.
The salary attached to the job is thought to be upwards of pounds
200,000, with one source describing pay arrangements as ‘a blank
cheque’.
The new role would bring together for the first time public relations
functions for BAT’s tobacco interests, and forms part of a major
restructuring within the group.
The company has four tobacco subsidiaries of which the largest is BAT
Co, representing more than half of BAT’s tobacco interests. BAT Co
controls 45 operating companies worldwide, each one of which has its own
local corporate affairs manager assisted by a 12-strong advisory team
headed by BAT Co corporate affairs manager David Bacon.
Philip Morris, which makes the Marlboro brand, is understood to have
hired headhunters to recruit a vice president for Euro communications.
Based in Brussels with a salary upwards of pounds 190,000, the job would
involve strengthening and co-ordinating Philip Morris’s communications
across the European Union.
Vice president, corporate affairs David Greenberg, who currently heads
the company’s pan-European public relations operations said: ‘We are
looking for a number of people across a number of countries.’
