Swisher—the world’s largest privately-held cigar company—has announced that John J. Miller, the company’s ceo and president, is leaving the company after nearly a decade at Swisher. Miller had been serving as president since 2017 and was given the ceo title earlier this year.

The new president will be Neil Kiely, who is a member of the board of directors and previously held leadership roles as Birra Peroni and MillerCoors.

A reason for Miller’s departure was not given.

“On behalf of the board of directors and Swisher’s employees, I would like to thank John for the work he has done for the company and our customers for the past nine years and wish him the best going forward,” said William Ziegler, chairman of Swisher’s board, in a press release. “As we look to the future, we have high confidence that Neil’s experience with companywide transformation will help Swisher accelerate its growth under his leadership.”

It does not appear that Kiely will immediately take the role of ceo, which could be left vacant. This would not be all that odd for Swisher as Miller served as president, but not ceo, during a roughly two-year period following the retirement of Peter Ghiloni in 2018.

Swisher is best known for its Swisher Sweets brand, a machine-made cigar made in the Dominican Republic. It is also the parent company of Drew Estate and has other interests including Hempire, Matchbook Capital and Rogue Holdings.

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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.