China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC), the nation’s cigarette monopoly, may be larger by annual profit than HSBC and Wal-Mart, reports Bloomberg.

According to a rare release of the company’s financial data, the state-owned tobacco company had net income of CNY 117.7 billion (EUR 14 billion) in 2010 on sales of CNY 770.4 billion. Industrial Bank released the figures in a statement yesterday because CNTC is buying a CNY 5.2 billion stake in the Shanghai-listed lender.
HSBC reported USD 16.8 billion (EUR 13 billion) of profit for its most recent fiscal year and Wal-Mart posted USD 15.7 billion. Figures for 2011 were not given for CNTC.
Its 2010 figures would make CNTC the world’s 18th largest company by profit, one spot ahead of American International Group (AIG) and just behind JPMorgan Chase, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It would be the world’s 30th largest company by sales.
CNTC made more in profit in 2010 than the combined total for Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, and Altria Group, the world’s three- biggest listed tobacco companies, according to the figures.
The Chinese goverment derived tax revenue of more than EUR 72 billion last year from the industry. (pi)