Guthrie (Malaysia)
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The Guthrie Group is a company that deals with plantations and was founded in Singapore in 1821 by Alexander Guthrie. It is the first British trading company in Southeast Asia. Guthrie introduced rubber and oil palm in Malaysia in 1896 and 1924 respectively.
In 1981, the group became a wholly Malaysian-owned company after Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad engineered a raid by Perbadanan Nasional Berhad to take over the group at the London Stock Exchange. The takeover allowed Malaysia to return ownership of some 200,000 acres (800 km²) of agricultural land back to Malaysians.
Guthrie Group was made a public company in 1987 and was subsequently listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) in 1989 in what was then the largest public issue in Malaysia.
The group's main activities are plantation and property management. The official trading name of Guthrie is Kumpulan Guthrie Bhd. Guthrie Group has plantation estates in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah, northern Sumatra and West Kalimantan (Borneo) in Indonesia.
