Christos Harpantidis, Vice President Southeast Europe, Philip Morris International

Christos Harpantidis is Vice President of Philip Morris International (PMI) for Southeastern Europe, with responsibility for 12 countries (Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania and Kosovo, North Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia).

Born in Thessaloniki in 1970, he studied Physics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and continued his studies in the United Kingdom, obtaining his Master's degree in Economics (MA) and Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Kent. He has also completed executive education programs at Stanford and Duke Universities.

He began his career in 1997 as a Marketing & Sales intern at Coca-Cola HBC. In 2003, he joined the Papastratos family, assuming responsibility for key positions in the commercial division in Greece and abroad. From 2012 to 2015, he was based at Philip Morris International in Lausanne, Switzerland, holding senior management positions in the Strategic Sales department and then in the New Generation Commercial Distribution department.

In August 2015, he was appointed President and CEO of Papastratos and Head of the South East Europe region (Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Cyprus, Malta) of Philip Morris International.

From 2017 to 2022, with a vision of a future free of cigarette smoke, he led the €500 million investment that transformed Papastratos' facilities into one of PMI's main production and export centers for innovative tobacco products and led the transformation of the leading historic Greek tobacco company into a global technology leader. In 2023, Christos assumed the position of PMI's Vice President for South East Europe to accelerate the region's journey towards a cigarette-free world.