P. Lorillard Company stock dividend certificate 1927 (tobacco)

Nice tobacco collectible. Plain certificate from an interesting company. Issued and cancelled. Dated 1927.

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 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," which created the opportunity for Lorillard to become an independent company,

Lorillard Tobacco Co. opened a new cigarette plant on East Market St. in Greensboro, NC in 1956, moving cigarette manufacturing from Jersey City, New Jersey and Richmond, VA. Loews Corporation purchased Lorillard in 1968. In 1997, the firm's headquarters moved to Greensboro from New York City. The firm also manufactured cigarettes in Louisville, Kentucky.

Loews created the Carolina Group as a holding company for its tobacco assets in 2002; it proceeded to sell a minority stake in Carolina on the New York Stock Exchange. Carolina was controlled by Loews until May 10, 2006. The sale is valued at approximately $740 million. In 2006, Lorillard was convicted of racketeering under RICO, along with Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds. The Supreme Court has upheld the verdict.

In 2008, Lorillard Tobacco was entered into a separation agreement with its parent company Loews, and became an independent publicly traded company. In April 2012, Lorillard purchased privately held electronic cigarette company, blu eCigs, for $135 million in cash, marking the first foray by the tobacco industry into the electronic cigarette market. The electronic cigarette company had about $30 million in revenue in 2010, with blu eCigs sold in more than 13,000 retail outlets, including Walgreens and Sheetz.

On July 15, 2014, Reynolds American agreed to buy Lorillard, for $27.4 billion, uniting two of the country’s largest tobacco producers in a bet that bigger is safer in a declining industry. The deal also included the sale of the Kool, Winston, Salem, and blu brands to Imperial Tobacco for $7.1 billion. The deal was finalized on June 12, 2015.