Last week, Heinrich Villiger announced that he has stepped down as director of Villiger Söhne AG.

He will continue to serve as chairman of the board of Villiger Söhne AG and Villiger Söhne Holding AG. The 85-year-old will be succeeded by Robert Suter, who recently served as the ceo of Conzetta, a Swiss conglomerate that includes companies in sporting goods, sheet metal processing, glass processing and other.

A press release notes that Villiger worked for his family company for 65 years. including a leadership role for 58 years and 27 years as head of the entire corporate structure.

While Villiger’s presence in the U.S. has been limited, the company claims to sell 1.5 billion cigars globally. It has an extremely strong presence in both the premium and small cigar market in Europe.

In addition to its own brands, Villiger subsidiaries are the distributor of Cuban cigars in both Germany and Switzerland.

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Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.