Hiroshi Kimura, the president and chief executive of Japan Tobacco, has not had much time to go fishing this year. Now that he has all but completed the deal to take over Gallaher, he hopes to find time to indulge his passion.

“It’s not a great time for fly fishing, but I hope to do some fishing at sea,” he told The Times yesterday.

The purchase of UK-based Gallaher, whose brands include Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut, is the biggest overseas acquisition by a Japanese company, trumping Japan Tobacco’s 1999 takeover of RJR Nabisco’s non-US cigarette operations for 940 billion yen — an acquisition that Mr Kimura was involved in negotiating.

Japan Tobacco gained the rights to sell the Camel, Winston and Salem brands outside America and established itself as a force on the global stage.

The Japanese company’s takeover of Gallaher does no damage to Mr Kimura’s already impressive track record.

As well as a fanatical fisherman, Mr Kimura, 53, is an avid reader, golfer and hiker. He joined Japan Tobacco after graduating from Kyoto University in 1976.

The company, a government monopoly, was called Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation at the time.

In 1985, Mr Kimura, who is regarded as a skilled negotiator, was part of a team that oversaw the corporation’s successful partial privatisation, and the resultant birth of Japan Tobacco.

By 1999, when the company bought Nabisco’s overseas operations, Mr Kimura was vice-president of its corporate planning division. Soon afterwards he moved to Geneva to run the new subsidiary, which was renamed JT International.

Many analysts doubted that Mr Kimura had the acumen to run its multinational, multicultural operations. At its headquarters in Geneva alone, the company employed 500 people from 40 countries.

However, Mr Kimura defied the sceptics. In the year to March 2005, Japan Tobacco’s overseas sales reached 223.5 billion cigarettes and for the first time they outstripped sales in Japan.

In 2005, Mr Kimura returned to the Tokyo headquarters in triumph, and was named president and chief executive officer in April.

Lighting up

11%

Japan Tobacco’s enlarged share of world market

223.5bn

Total cigarettes sold outside Japan in 2004-05

£11.40

Price per Gallaher share Japan Tobacco is paying

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