Philip Morris International (PMI) (NYSE: PM) is an international cigarette and tobacco company, with products sold in over 160 countries with 15.6% of the international cigarette market outside the United States. Because tobacco, the main constituent of cigarettes, is considered the single greatest cause of preventable death globally and is considered addictive, the company's operations (and its competitors) are highly controversial and are increasingly the subject of litigation and restrictive legislation from governments concerned about the health impacts of its products.

Philip Morris was born in Whitechapel in 1835, the son of a recent immigrant from Germany who had taken the name Bernard Morris. In 1847, the family opened a shop in London. The first cigarettes that Phillip Morris made were in 1854.

On Mr. Morris’s death, the business was taken over by his wife Margaret and his brother Leopold. In 1881 the Company went public, Leopold Morris joining Joseph Grunebaum to establish Philip Morris & Company and Grunebaum, Ltd. This partnership was dissolved in 1885 and the Company became known as Philip Morris & Co., Ltd.

The Company finally left the founding family’s control in 1894, when it was taken over by William Curtis Thomson and his family. Under Thomson, the Company was appointed tobacconist to King Edward VII and, in 1902, was incorporated in New York, by Gustav Eckmeyer. Ownership was split 50-50 between the British parent and American partners. Eckmeyer had been sole agent for Philip Morris in the U.S. since 1872, importing and selling English-made cigarettes.

1919 was a crucial year for the Company. It saw the introduction of the Philip Morris coronet logo, the acquisition of the Philip Morris Company in the U.S. by a new firm owned by American stockholders, and its incorporation in Virginia under the name of Philip Morris & Co., Ltd., Inc. By the end of the next decade, the Company had begun to manufacture cigarettes in its factory in Richmond, Virginia; in 1924, what was to become its most famous brand, Marlboro, was introduced.

By the mid-1950s the Company had become a part of American culture, and soon after it launched Philip Morris International to manufacture and market its products around the world.

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