Inchcape and Co Ltd

Efforts to consolidate the extensive international investments of the Inchcape family and the directorships and partnerships held by the third Earl of Inchcape resulted in the public launch of a parent holding company, Inchcape and Company Limited, in 1958.

Interests in merchant trading, shipping and agency houses had been built up since 1874 when James Lyle Mackay (from 1911 the first Earl of Inchcape) joined the Calcutta-based merchant and agency firm of Mackinnon, Mackenzie and Company, established in 1847 by William Mackinnon. Mackinnon's business empire extended beyond India to Australia, the Middle East and East Africa. Founder of the British India Steam Navigation Company Limited (whose historic records are at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich) and the Australasian United Steam Navigation Company Limited, he also set up agency firms at strategic ports (Gray, Dawes and Company in London; Gray, Mackenzie and Company and Gray, Paul and Company in the Persian Gulf; and Smith, Mackenzie and Company in Zanzibar) to handle the passenger and merchandise cargo carried alongside the Royal Mail.

As Mackinnon's commercial heir, Mackay had risen by the 1890s to the position of partner within the firm. He had also begun a personal investment portfolio, buying major shareholdings in Indian tea estates (among them Assam Estates Company Limited, Greenwood Tea Company Limited, Northern Dooars Tea Company Limited and Salonah Tea Company Limited), textile firms (Binny and Company Limited) and their English and Indian managing agents (Macneill and Company, Duncan Macneill and Company, Barry and Company and J B Barry and Son) and in two river steamer companies (Rivers Steam Navigation Company Limited and India General Steam Navigation Company Limited) and their managing agents (Kilburn and Company). Before 1958, there was no structural link between the majority of these companies, whose common denominator was the Inchcape family interest in them. However, after the Second World War, change was necessary, especially in newly independent India, for reasons of taxation and other economic restrictions placed on foreign companies. The option finally decided on by the third Earl of Inchcape was for a rationalisation of holdings and the incorporation of those retained into a single publicly quoted company based in London rather than India.

After the launch of the Inchcape Group in 1958, the group expanded very rapidly, both by the development of existing companies and their range of activities, and by the purchase of other groups: among them, the Borneo Company Limited in 1967, Dodwell and Company Limited in 1972, Anglo Thai Corporation in 1975 and Assam Company Limited in 1980.

The London headquarters of Inchcape and Company Limited was at 40 St Mary Axe, 1960-88, and St James House, 23 King Street, Westminster, 1988-.