The story
The company was founded by Sir Mark Weinberg, Lord Joffe and Sir Sydney Lipworth after Abbey Life was taken over, with seed finance from Hambros Bank, and set up its headquarters in Swindon town centre in 1970 under the name Hambro Life Assurance. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1975. The company expanded its financial adviser operations during the late 1970s and early 1980s, acquiring the Allied Unit Trusts of which it was soon the major unitholder, to become 'Allied Hambro' in 1984. The company became 'Allied Dunbar' in 1985 after it purchased Dunbar & Co., a small private bank, following the acquisition by BAT Industries. The asset management department was hived off to form Threadneedle Investments, and it was bought out by Zurich Financial Services in 1998.
Its direct sales force became the 'Zurich Advice Network' (ZAN) in 2001. In 2005 and following changes in industry regulation ZAN evolved into a stand-alone entity known as Openwork—a directly authorised multi-tiered financial distribution network.
Allied Dunbar operated a large conference centre as King Edward's Place in Foxhill, near Swindon, which was sold to be a hotel following the closure of the direct sales operation.
From Wikipedia’s article on Allied Dunbar, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4