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.
Origin
George Roberts, a woollen manufacturer of Selkirk, Scotland sent his 19-year-old fourth son, John, to Melbourne, Australia in 1864 to join young John Sanderson in a new colonial venture with the Sanderson and Murray families from nearby Galashiels. Sanderson Murray & Co owned a very substantial woolbrokers and import-export merchants in Gresham Street, London. John was required by his father to learn the colonial business, buy wool supplies and sell Selkirk's high quality products.