The ‘Unfinished Business’ of Malaysia's Decolonisation: The Origins of the Guthrie ‘Dawn Raid’

In a ‘dawn raid’ on the London Stock Exchange on 7 September 1981, the premiere British rubber and oil palm conglomerate in Malaysia, the Guthrie Corporation Limited, was taken into local control in less than four hours. This was the most dramatic Malaysian acquisition of a foreign company during th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Modern Asian studies 2010-09, Vol.44 (5), p.919-960
Main Authors: YACOB, SHAKILA, WHITE, NICHOLAS J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acquisitions & mergers
Archives & records
Asian history
Business
Business structures
Collective memory
Colonial history
Competition
Corporations
Decolonization
Economic Policy
Elections
Enterprises
Financial investments
Governors
Investments
London, England
Malaysia
Minority Businesses
Petroleum
Plantations
Political history
Postcolonialism
Power
Prime ministers
Rubber
Shareholders
State elections
Stock exchanges
Subsidiary companies
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Summary:In a ‘dawn raid’ on the London Stock Exchange on 7 September 1981, the premiere British rubber and oil palm conglomerate in Malaysia, the Guthrie Corporation Limited, was taken into local control in less than four hours. This was the most dramatic Malaysian acquisition of a foreign company during the restructuring of the country's post-colonial economy during the 1970s and 1980s, and the Guthrie Dawn Raid remains a celebrated but, at the same time, contested juncture in contemporary Malaysian memory. Drawing upon a variety of sources—including original interviews and correspondence with key participants in, and observers of, the Guthrie Dawn Raid, as well as newly released British documents related to the Anglo-Malaysian events of September 1981—this article presents a new interpretation of the origins of this most iconic of Malaysian corporate takeovers. In particular, it stresses the long-term aspirations of a key (but often overlooked) figure within the late and post-colonial Malay bureaucratic and economic elite, Ismail Mohamed Ali. At the same time, the article emphasizes the specific requirements of Malaysia's New Economic Policy against the backdrop of burgeoning intra-Malaysian ethnic business competition.
ISSN:0026-749X
1469-8099
DOI:10.1017/S0026749X09990308