Johnson Matthey - History

History

Johnson Matthey traces its origins to 1817, when Percival Norton Johnson set up business as a gold assayer in London. In 1851 George Matthey joined the business and its name was changed to Johnson & Matthey. The following year the firm was appointed Official Assayer & Refiner to the Bank of England. The company had branches in the cities of Birmingham and Sheffield to supply the jewellery and silverware and cutlery trade with raw materials ancillary supplies, such as silver solder and flux which it manufactured.

In the 1960s Johnson Matthey formed a subsidiary, Johnson Matthey Bankers (JMB), which took its seat in the London Gold Fixing. In the early 1980s the bank expanded its activities outside the bullion business and started making high-risk loans. Bank assets more than doubled between 1980 and 1984, and loans became concentrated to a few borrowers, including Mahmoud Sipra and his El Saeed group, Rajendra Sethia and ESAL Commodities, and Abdul Shamji. The quality of some of these loans turned out to be worse than expected, such as the £21 million lent to Abdul Shamji of Gomba Holdings (the then owner of Puddle Dock and the Mermaid Theatre in London). The size of the loans to these borrowers grew to exceed the level of the bank's capital. (Shamji was sentenced to 15 months in prison for lying about his assets during a subsequent High Court inquiry into the bank's collapse.) Because JMB was one of five members of the London Gold Fixing, Bank of England officials were worried that if the bank became insolvent then confidence in the other bullion banks would be undermined, and that panic could spread further to the rest of the British banking system. To prevent a wider banking crisis the Bank of England organized a rescue package on the evening of 30 September 1984, purchasing JMB for £1. Most of JMB's business was subsequently sold to Mase Westpac.

In 2008 Johnson Matthey acquired Argillon, a business specialising in catalysts, for €214 million. In December 2008 US subsidiary Johnson Matthey Inc was fined $3 million for a felony violation of the United States Clean Water Act, after admitting to violating the Clean Water Act at its Salt Lake City precious metals refining facility.

In October 2010 Johnson Matthey acquired InterCAT, a leading supplier of Fluid Catalytic Cracking additives for the petroleum refining industry, for $56.2 million. Also in 2010 Johnson Matthey opened a new £34 million European emission control catalyst plant in Macedonia, which will leverage its manufacturing technology to produce catalysts for both light- and heavy-duty vehicles.