Brown-Forman Corporation

The Brown-Forman Corporation is one of the largest American-owned companies in the spirits and wine business. Some well-known brands of the corporation include Jack Daniel's, Southern Comfort, Finlandia Vodka, Woodford Reserve Bourbon, Canadian Mist, Early Times, Old Forester, and Korbel champagne. The company was founded in 1870 by George Garvin Brown, a young pharmaceuticals salesman in Louisville, who had the then-novel idea of selling top-grade whiskey in sealed glass bottles. Since then, it has grown into a company that in fiscal 2006 had sales of $2.4 billion. The Brown family controls... more than 70% of the voting shares. Brown Forman has two classes of common stock, both of which are traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange. The Class A shares carry voting privileges and are thinly traded due to control by the Brown family while the Class B shares are Non-voting stock. In 2005, the company sold its Lenox division , which had been acquired in 1983, to Department 56 for $USD 160 million.
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