| Former type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Plantation, Property, Manufacturing & Others |
| Founded | 1821 |
| Defunct | 2007 |
| Headquarters | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia |
| Key people | Tan Sri Dato’ Dr. Wan Mohd. Zahid Mohd Noordin(Chairman) Dato’ Abd Wahab Maskan (Group Chief Executive) |
| Revenue | ( 2.406 billion MYR 2006 ( 0.43billion MYR) |
| Employees | 46,759 |
| Website | Official Guthrie Group website |
Guthrie Group Limited (Malay: Kumpulan Guthrie Berhad; MYX: 3131, delisted) was a Malaysian company that primarily dealt with plantations. It merged with three other plantation groups to form the world's largest plantation company with the name of Sime Darby Berhad.
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Guthrie was founded in Singapore in 1821 by Alexander Guthrie, as 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 Pemodalan 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.
With the government investment company Pemodalan Nasional Berhad being the largest single shareholder, the government merged Guthrie with Sime Darby and Golden Hope plantation to form a new entity named Synergy Drive, later renamed Sime Darby. All Guthrie shares was de-listed on November 1, 2007 and re-listed on November 30, 2007. As of November 2007, Sime Darby is the largest company in Malaysia by market capitalization and also the largest plantation operator in the world with a land bank of over 540,000 hecters[1]
The group's main activities are plantation and property management. The official trading name of Guthrie is Kumpulan Guthrie Berhad. Guthrie Group has plantation estates in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah, and northern Sumatra and West Kalimantan (Borneo) in Indonesia. The group is also engaged in real estate (with the formation of Guthrie Properties in 1994) and manufacturing.