The story
The Union-Investment-Gesellschaft mbH was the third German investment association to be founded, on 26 January 1956, by 14 credit unions. The UniFonds stock fund was created the same year as its first open-end fund. The first offering of investment vehicles outside Germany was in 1961, in Belgium.
Co op Immobilienfonds Verwaltung AG was founded in Hamburg in 1965 and in 1980 renamed Deutsche Immobilien Fonds AG or DIFA. The initial stockholders were the Central Institute of Consumer Cooperatives and the Bank für Gemeinwirtschaft. In 1966 DIFA launched an open-end property fund, Co op Immobilienfonds, later renamed DIFA-Fonds Nr. 1 (DIFA Fund No. 1). Starting on 15 January 2007, DIFA did business under the name Union Investment Real Estate AG; in 2009 it was converted to a GmbH.
Since 1967, Union Investment has offered management of investment accounts. In 1968, it offered its first retirement fund, UniRenta. In 1969, it reached a fund capitalization of 1 billion DM.
Union Investment Luxembourg S.A. was founded in 1988. The total capitalization of the group was now 10 billion DM.
In April 1994, Union Investment began offering stock-based wealth management with three strategic variants: chance, growth and security. In 1996 it introduced stock-based life insurance under the name Opti Plan.
The holding company Union-Fonds-Holding AG was founded in 1999 and changed its name in July 2002 to Union Asset Management Holding AG.
From Wikipedia’s article on Union Investment, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4