The firm was originally formed as a series of investment trusts, pooling money from Scottish investors into overseas ventures, and later moved into merchant banking.

[4] Despite restructuring, Flemings saw its investment banking and asset management market share decline in the 1990s as global investment banks like Morgan Stanley and Lazard moved into their markets.

[5] The Fleming name was tarnished by a scandal in 1996, when Jardine Fleming was ordered to pay $19 million to fund investors for alleged abusive and unsupervised securities allocation practices by its asset management division.

[6] In April 2000, Robert Flemings Holdings was sold to Chase Manhattan Bank for $7.7 billion.

In the sale, about 130 Fleming family members pocketed approximately $2.3 billion for their 30 percent stake.