Reflections on "Going Down Tobacco Road" and Investing

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INTRODUCTION The June 6 comments on D-Day had the highest readership of any of my posts. Because of this reader interest, we will do a series on people…
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INTRODUCTION In PART VII, we discussed how RJR restructured its pension fund. One of the choices was PIMCO in Newport Beach. PIMCO’s long history has…
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As you get this Post, I am in the Italian Alps at my granddaughter’s wedding. But even on this festive day, my memory turns back to another time and…
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DUE DILIGENCE Not uncommon for a new Chief Financial Officer, Joe Abely wanted a total review and restructure of the investment managers for the RJR…
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BACKGROUND The book Going Down Tobacco Road ended in 2017, about the time British American Tobacco bought the 60% of Reynolds American that it did not…
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Shortly after I took the pension job, Joe Abely arrived to become RJR’s CFO. Joe was Boston Irish, a Boston College graduate, with both an MBA and an…
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On April 9, 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant accepted General Robert E. Lee’s surrender of his Army of Northern Virginia at the village of Appomattox…
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In 1977, I moved into the pension fund section at the RJR Treasurer’s Department, reporting to Treasurer John Dowdle. I was still smarting about not…
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In 1955, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco created an employee profit sharing plan. Based on a profitability formula, a portion of the company’s profit was…
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The first challenge that ERISA posed for pension plans was making a realistic forecast of future payouts over the next forty years and beyond. This was…
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INTRODUCTION Tobacco farmers have many memories of the autumn tobacco market – the crowds, the pickup trucks loaded with tobacco, the aroma of the leaf…
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The “modern” history of RJR’s retirement funds begins about 1949 when Reynolds was making annual, and increasing, contributions.[i] We will examine that…
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