The Ottoman Tobacco Company, (Memalik-i Şahane Duhanları Müşterekül Menfaa Reji Şirketi) also known as the Régie Company for its French official name Société de la régie co-intéressée des tabacs de l'empire Ottoman, was a parastatal company or Regie formed in the later Ottoman Empire by the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, with backing from a consortium of European banks.
The company had a monopoly over tobacco production, and its revenue was intended to help overcome the Ottoman state's persistent shortage of income.
[4] In 1884, the Ottoman government instituted a tobacco monopoly and delegated it to a partly foreign company, the “Regie co-intréressée des tabacs de l’Empire ottoman”,[5] which relied on a consortium of European banks and on the Imperial Ottoman Bank, also listed in London and Paris.
Founded in 1863, the latter[6] brought together French shareholders supplementing initial contributions of British funds in 1856.
To this day, the state-run tobacco monopolies in Lebanon and Syria are known as Régie.