Early years

Johnson Matthey traces its origins to 1817, when Percival Norton Johnson set up business as a gold assayer in London.^[4] In 1851 George Matthey joined the business and its name was changed to Johnson & Matthey.^[4] The following year the firm was appointed official assayer and refiner to the Bank of England.^[4] The company had branches in the cities of Birmingham and Sheffield to supply the jewellery and silverware and cutlery trade with raw materials and ancillary supplies, such as silver solder and flux, which it manufactured.^[5]

In 1874, the company was commissioned to manufacture the kilogram reference standard, made from 90% platinum and 10% iridium, and held in the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (International Bureau of Weights and Measures), and copies of it for international distribution. Johnson Matthey similarly also produced the International Prototype Metre and its copies.^[6]

20th century

Beginning in 1957, the company published a journal, Platinum Metals Review.^[7]

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.^[8] 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^[9] (the then owner of Puddle Dock and the Mermaid Theatre in London). The size of the loans 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 High Court inquiry into the bank's collapse.)^[10]

Because JMB was one of five members of the London Gold Fixing, Bank of England officials were worried that if it became insolvent confidence in the other bullion banks would be undermined, and panic could spread to the rest of the British banking system. To prevent a wider banking crisis the Bank of England organised a rescue package on the evening of 30 September 1984, purchasing JMB for £1.^[11] Most of JMB's business was subsequently sold to Mase Westpac.^[12]

21st century

In 2008 Johnson Matthey acquired Argillon, a business specialising in catalysts, for €214 million.^[13]

In October 2010 Johnson Matthey acquired InterCAT, a supplier of fluid catalytic cracking additives for the petroleum refining industry, for $56.2 million.^[14] Also in 2010 Johnson Matthey opened a new £34 million European emission control catalyst plant in Skopje, (North Macedonia), which produced catalysts for both light- and heavy-duty vehicles.^[15]

The company was one of the first FTSE 100 companies to produce an integrated annual report and won the Best Annual Report in the FTSE 100 in the ICSA Hermes Transparency in Governance Awards in 2012, which recognised how sustainability issues were 'described in a way that clearly links them to business strategy and performance, rather than leaving them in a silo or on the sidelines.'^[16]

In 2014, the company was shortlisted for Business in the Community's Responsible Business of the Year Award for its Sustainability 2017 programme.^[17]

In 2015, Johnson Matthey sold its gold and silver refining operations to Asahi Holdings, Inc., a Japanese firm.^[18]