Guthrie (company)

Kumpulan Guthrie Berhad

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)
Number of employees	46,759
Website	www.guthrie.com.my

Guthrie Group Limited (Malay: Kumpulan Guthrie Berhad; MYX: , 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.

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.

Alexander Guthrie was born in the parish of Menmuir in Angus, Scotland in 1796, son of David Guthrie of Burnside and his wife Margaret Guthrie, née Guthrie. He went to Singapore in 1821 to set up a trading branch of Thomas Talbot Harrington and Company. Guthrie parted company with Harrington in 1823, and his company was renamed Guthrie and Company in 1833. He retired in 1847, handing the firm over to his nephew James Guthrie, and retired to London, where he died unmarried in 1865. James Guthrie was born in Tannadice in Angus in 1814, son of Alexander's brother David and his wife Katharine Grant. James arrived in Singapore in 1829 and became a partner in 1837. He married in 1846 Susan Scott, a distant cousin, and had two daughters and a son before Susan's death in Singapore in 1853. James left Singapore in 1856 and returned to Britain. He retired from the firm in 1876 and died in 1900. Other partners included James' nephew by marriage, John James Greenshields, whose mother Margaret Lyall Scott was the sister of Susan Scott. Greenshields was born in Liverpool in 1823 and died there in 1873. Another was James Guthrie's brother-in-law Thomas Scott, born in Dun, Angus in 1832 and died in Angus in 1902, who became a partner in 1857 and senior partner in 1867.

In 1981, the group became a wholly Malaysian-owned company after Mahathir Mohamad engineered a raid to take over the group at the . The takeover allowed Malaysia to return ownership of some 200,000 acres (800 km²) of agricultural land back to Malaysians. Khalid Ibrahim, CEO of Permodalan Nasional Berhad later became the CEO of the Malaysianized Guthrie, now known as Kumpulan Guthrie Bhd, from 1995 to 2003.