Swedish Match’s continued divesture in Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) is continuing. The company announced that it sold an additional 9 million shares of the company, reducing its stake to 9,069,906 shares, or 9.07 percent of the company.

The sale of these shares took place on Jan. 19 and the company announced today that it has transferred the remaining 9.07 million shares to Swedish Match Treasury Switzerland AG, another subsidiary of Swedish Match AB.

STG is the parent company of General Cigar Co., which sells the CAO and Macanudo brands globally as well as Cohiba, Hoyo de Monterrey, La Gloria Cubana and Partagas brands in the U.S. It is also the owner of Cigars International and its affiliated brands Cigar.com and Cigar Bid.

It went public last year, prior to that STG was a joint venture between Skandinavisk Holding A/S, which controlled 51 percent of the company, and Swedish Match, which owned the remaining 49 percent.

When the company went public, it was widely expected that Swedish Match would be exiting the cigar business.

swedish-match-owernship-in-stg

It has done so in gradual steps. The company owned 31.2 percent of the publicly traded company after the ipo, reduced to 31.1 percent a month later. In September it sold 13 million shares reducing its stake to 18.1 percent.

The shares were sold at 118 DKK, approximately $152.5 million.

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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.