About Swire

FAST FACTS

(All results refer to financial year 2008. Other data effective end July 2009.)

Swire group

Swire encompasses a wide range of commercial activities and its interests span five continents. Swire's principal areas of operation are in the Asia Pacific region, and centre on the Greater China area. The Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong is home to publicly quoted Swire Pacific, whose core businesses are grouped under five operating divisions: property, aviation, beverages, marine services, and trading & industrial.

John Swire & Sons, Swire's parent company, is headquartered in London, and in addition to its 38.5% shareholding in Swire Pacific, controls a range of wholly-owned businesses, including deep-sea shipping, cold storage, road transport, and agricultural activities, with main areas of operation in Australia, Papua New Guinea, East Africa, Sri Lanka, the USA and UK. John Swire & Sons acts as overall coordinator of Swire policy, and, under various agreements, management and advisory services are provided within the group.

Year Established

John Swire & Sons Liverpool 1816, Melbourne 1855, London 1864, Shanghai 1866, Yokohama 1867, Hong Kong 1870, New York 1874

Cathay Pacific Hong Kong 1946

Swire Pacific Hong Kong 1974, from an existing public company, The Taikoo Dockyard and Engineering Company of Hong Kong Limited, first quoted on the Hong Kong stock market in 1959

James Finlay Glasgow 1750. James Finlay became a Swire group associate in 1976 and a wholly-owned subsidiary in 2000

Employees

Swire group + associates Some 124,800

2008 Performance

John Swire & Sons reported a profit attributable to shareholders of UK £306m for 2008 on turnover of UK£3,873m. The principal financial statistics of listed companies in the Swire group were:

Listed companies Turnover Profit/(loss)
attributable
to shareholders Shareholders'
funds

Swire Pacific HK$ 24,670m HK$ 5,293m HK$ 152,303m

Cathay Pacific Airways HK$ 86,578m (HK$ 8,558m) HK$ 38,325m

Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company HK$ 4,901m HK$ 1,138m HK$ 4,961m

Steamships Trading Company Kina 466m Kina 90m Kina 327m

2009 marks:

145 years since Swire group parent company John Swire & Sons established its headquarters in London
130 years since the foundation of Australia's leading construction and demolition waste recycler, Alex Fraser
50 years since Swire Travel was registered as an IATA-approved travel agent
50 years since Swire floated its first public company, the Taikoo Dockyard & Engineering Company, on the Hong Kong stock market and 35 years since that company was re-named Swire Pacific Limited
30 years since Swire acquired EPD Limited (now Swire Oilfield Services) and 30 years since Cathay Pacific acquired its first Boeing 747 aircraft.
10 years since Taikoo Motors acquired the Volkswagen franchise in Taiwan.

Swire's Chinese name is Taikoo (太古) meaning "Great and Ancient" and our motto is "Esse Quam Videri" meaning "To be, rather than to seem to be."