Yes and no.
There is a very healthy tobacco and cigar aficionado community already. I was once in the Davidoff shop a few blocks behind GCT and a guy walks in and offers us all a finger of scotch out of a bottle that was somewhere north of $3,000 retail. It's close union of mostly guys that will welcome a stranger with a lit tobacco device, be it cigar, pipe, whatever. The cigarette guys have their own group as well.
As for the passing of Phillip Morris, it reminds me of that old Mark Twain saying - "Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated".
I know a PM employee very well. That company has more money than they know what to do with. Throughout the 80's and 90's, things looked down because of legal liabilities, but there was always an underlying money machine firing on all cylinders. If you watch "Barbarians at the Gate", you'll see the problem was never profits, it was that the stock price was being hammered because DESPITE the cash flow, because the legal ramifications were very big. Lots of those legal questions have been settled now, and the government has very strict regs on how to market, sell, and produce cigs. As of today they are doing quite well and very generous to employees.
The railroad leasing business is probably one of those "where do we park our cash?" sidelines. We've also seen the tobacco giants buy food companies and change their names to make it look less like a tobacco company to investors.
Long story short, the rail leasing thing was a bit of a distraction and PM is not going away any time soon.
The new Acela: It's not Aveliable.
) will be as nostalgic over the passing of Philip Morris as railfans are about Penn Central?
