The chronicle of Eger Tobacco Factory

On the great ship

the Eger Tobacco Factory's doubts, and that is why it commissioned Mats Ulriksson, its representative in Hungary, to persuade the management of the company of the advantages of being a part of Philip Morris. The meeting took place in September 1990. We all sat down in the boardroom, with Mats on one side of the parallel line of tables, while on the other side sat Dr. László Domán, director, József Várhelyi and Jenő Molnár, deputy directors, the interpreter and the company lawyer. One can sum up what Mats Ulriksson said in the words: It's good to belong to a winner. At the meeting we persuaded him that the State Property Agency, as its name clearly indicated, was nothing more than an agency behaving as owner and on which many decisions depended, but amongst the given legal frameworks in the question of the transformation the Company Council of the Eger Tobacco Factory was competent, and the decision maker. We said, let Philip Morris come to Eger and persuade the people. An agreement was also born on the drawing up of a study in which the recent state of the Eger Tobacco Factory would be detailed, what sort of capital structure, investments, organizational transformations were pictured, and how the future of the Eger Tobacco Factory tinder the direction of Philip Morris was visualized.

To assist this study we contributed with plenty of previously prepared data and 24 questions, from which I would like to quote the first and last.

“1. Philip Morris has several sister companies in Europe. What is the guarantee that in case of a majority PM ownership it won't close down the Eger Tobacco Factory, respectively the factory won’t become redundant for PM?

24. Is PM willing to work out the transformation programme with the management of the Eger Tobacco Factory and prepare a joint proposal for the State Property Agency?”

Delegations face to face.

Philip Morris is represented byJean-Claude Kunz