Murray Roberts & Co

Murray Roberts & Co Limited
Company typeprivate company
IndustryStock and station agency
Founded1867 (1867) in Dunedin, New Zealand
FounderJohn Roberts
Defunct30 June 1961 (1961-06-30)
FatePurchased by National Mortgage & Agency Company
Headquarters,
New Zealand
Area served
New Zealand, excluding Canterbury and the upperNorth Island
Key people
John Roberts, Alfred Henry Miles
Products
  • Pastoral property investment and development
  • services to agricultural and pastoral producers

Murray Roberts & Co Limited owned a stock and station agency in New Zealand. For a time, it was New Zealand's largest wool exporter. Its business began in Green Island, Dunedin as a fellmongery owned by the Melbourne partners. Under direction of young John Roberts from 1867, it made very substantial investments in rural property in Otago and Hawke's Bay and spread as a stock and station agency through Otago and Southland and the lower half of the North Island.

Ownership was transferred to a newly incorporated limited liability company in 1910. Until then it had been owned by a complicated network of partners with its core in Scotland, England, and Dunedin. Additional different subsidiary partnerships in different regions were set up to include local management.

Murray Roberts & Co was purchased in 1961 by another Dunedin-based business, National Mortgage & Agency Company. Becoming fully integrated with the operations of National Mortgage it lost most of its separate identity in 1963 though some operations continued until 1965.