CWNews
Altadis President Announces Retirement
by Frank Seltzer, July 14, 2009
Altadis U.S.A. announced that Theo Folz, the company’s President and CEO, will retire on September 30th. Folz has been with the company for 25 years and been in the cigar industry for 46 years.
Folz began his cigar career working for his father. Monte Folz was a district sales manager in Memphis for Bayuk who made Phillies and he brought in Theo to help him out. Theo grew with Bayuk and eventually, when Bayuk decided to sell off its assets and close, he bought the Phillies brand in partnership with Hav-A-Tampa. He ran that company for 2 years, commuting from his home in Fort Lauderdale to Tampa. In 1984 financier Ron Perelman bought Consolidated Cigars and brought Folz in to run it. And he has been there ever since.
In 1999, Consolidated was purchased by the French tobacco company SEITA and later that year SEITA merged with Tabacalera of Spain creating Altadis, and also returning Phillies back to Theo’s control—Tabacalera had previously purchased Hav-A-Tampa along with the Phillies brand..
Today, Altadis U.S.A has easily recognizable brands like Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta, Dutch Masters, Phillies and Backwoods. Folz has been active in fighting for cigar smokers rights and is a dominant figure in the cigar world.
Theo and his wife Connie look forward to doing more travel and enjoyng their sport fishing boat.
He will be succeeded as President and CEO by Gary Ellis, currently the CFO. Ellis has been with the company for over 20 years.
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Frank Seltzer (Mowee) is a former network correspondent who now owns a media consulting company in Dallas, TX. A regular cigar smoker since 1973, Frank runs the DFW Cigar Society, a group that has almost 300 members who get together twice a month to trade smokes and lies. He also runs away as often as he can to his condo in Maui... hence the name Mowee (which, by the way, was the way Captain Cook originally spelled the island when he heard Hawaiians speak it.)
