China National Tobacco Reports Higher Profit than Wal-Mart’s

China National Tobacco Corp., that nation’s cigarette monopoly, may be larger by annual profit than Wal-Mart Stores Inc. according to a rare release of the company’s financial data, reports Bloomberg News. The state-owned tobacco company had net income of 117.7 billion yuan ($18.7 billion) in 2010 on sales of 770.4 billion yuan. Industrial Bank Co. released the figures in a statement last week because China National Tobacco is buying a 5.2 billion yuan stake in the Shanghai-listed lender. China National Tobacco made more in profit in 2010 than the combined total for Philip Morris International Inc. (PM), British American Tobacco Plc (BATS), and Altria Group, Inc., the world’s three- biggest listed tobacco companies, according to the figures.