BIG INTERVIEW
PATRICK GANGULY
16 ASIAN TRADER 27 JUNE 2025
t strikes me on entering the bright,
sun-filled offices of Imperial Brands
– not the main one, which is in
Bristol, but the sleek new building
in Hammersmith from where the
company’s international businesses is
administered – that Patrick Ganguly is a
good match for the firm, which was created
from a medley of tobacconists way back in
1901, near the Bristol quayside.
One’s first impression is how Patrick’s
charming appearance is further embodied by
his voice – an accent combining crisp,
cultured Bay of Bengal consonants with a
light vinaigrette of Ozzie Strine that
occasionally slips through, pencilling in both
his origins and experience.
He was born in Kolkata and educated
there at a Christian school before the
traditional transit to St Xavier’s College,
although academic life, he says, was not in
his plans.
“Dad used to work for Pfizer, and he got
transferred somewhere but basically said,
No, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to leave
the family. So Mum and Dad ended up
buying a franchise. That was quite ahead of
their time, because it was all Indian tiffin
back then, rice and so on – and they intro
duced the concept of sandwiches, cakes,
occasions, in partnership with another
company, and we did fairly well there.”
It sounds like a solid middle-class
upbringing in what is arguably India’s most
“English” city, and like Bristol, a major port
on a big river ….
“Coming back to my story,” says Patrick,
“I saw an ad which asked, Do you want to
come and study in Australia? Now, I had zero
intention to study, but Australia seemed like
a really cool place because the cricket was
there. So, off I went in 1995 and I now call
Australia home. I’ve lived in Australia for
almost 32 years.”
He began his professional life at Voda
fone, before moving to W.D. & H.O. Wills,
then Imperial, which had entered the
Imperial Brands’ new UK MD, Patrick
Ganguly, is steering the ship through stormy
legislative waters by holding fast to tradition
and setting a steady course for the future...
‘I choose to be an optimist!’
By Andy Marino
Australian market in 1999.
So, it is maybe appropriate that
after a career of working and
travelling in many countries and
territories – not only Australia and
New Zealand, but also places like
Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia, Laos,
Vietnam, Hong Kong and Korea
– that Patrick fetches up in the old
and traditional port of Bristol, as if
returning home from a long
voyage, to take the helm of
Imperial Brands UK as Managing
Director (or to put it more
precisely, MD & Cluster General
Manager United Kingdom, Ireland
and the Channel Islands).
We are here to talk about the
tobacco and vape industry,
Imperial’s place in it and plans for
the future; and the context is the looming
Tobacco and Vapes Bill, not to mention what
was, a month ago, the imminent disposable
vapes ban, now in place.
If you read Asian Trader you will know we
are tireless campaigners for the rights of
tobacco consumers, producers and above all
retailers, within a sensible and well-enforced
legal framework – a nice idea that the UK
Government should probably give a try one
day.
The obvious place to begin our discussion,
bearing in mind that Patrick formerly had
responsibility for the ANZ region, is New
Zealand. That was where Jacinda Adern, its
recently departed Prime Minister, had
attempted to impose a law that was so
short-sighted and impractical that it
contributed to the downfall of her adminis
tration.
We speak of course of her radical and
illiberal proposal to impose a generational
smoking ban, that would invent a new sort of
age-related apartheid – if you were born after
a particular date, you would be forbidden
ever to purchase tobacco products, although
an older sibling, for example, would suffer no
such restriction. Indonesia had the idea first,
but it was wisely struck down by that
country’s Supreme Court as inimical to basic
human rights.
So naturally, we are going to introduce it
in the UK instead. I ask Patrick how the
industry can deal with what we could call
“ideological” legislation, the sort that
barrels ahead with a political cause
regardless of consequences. The kind of
legislation that disregards the wellbeing of
the population, for example – like the
disposable vapes ban.
He points out that in the small print of
the Government’s own impact assessment
of the disposables ban, it admits a third of
users would go back to smoking. Great.
The problem seems to be that the
Government needs the tax revenue, but
wants to ban the practice at the same time,
which leads directly to a mismatch of
legislation, enforcement and ambition.
“If you think of ideological legislation,
the generational ban probably falls into that
area,” Patrick agrees.
“Yes, it’s great to bring legislation into
play that has a generation ban and ulti