page_title: Allianz
section_title: Foundation
hierarchical_section_title: Allianz / History / Foundation
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: gewölbtes Emailleschild um 1900 der Allianz
context_page_description: Allianz SE is a German multinational financial services company headquartered in Munich, Germany. Its core businesses are insurance and asset management. As of 2014, it is the world's largest insurance company, the largest financial services group and the largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine, as well as the largest financial services company when measured by 2013 revenue. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index.
  Its asset management division, which consists of PIMCO, Allianz Global Investors and Allianz Real Estate, has €1,960 billion of assets under management, of which €1,448 billion are third-party assets.
  Allianz sold Dresdner Bank to Commerzbank in November 2008. As a result of this transaction, Allianz gained a 14% controlling stake in the new Commerzbank.
context_section_description: Allianz AG was founded in Berlin on 5 February 1890 by then director of the Munich Reinsurance Company Carl von Thieme (a native of Erfurt, whose father was the director of Thuringia) and Wilhelm von Finck (co-owner of the Merck Finck & Co bank). The joint company was listed in Berlin's trade register under the name Allianz Versicherungs-Aktiengesellschaft. The first Allianz products were marine and accident policies first sold only in Germany, however in 1893 Allianz opened its first international branch office in London. It distributed marine insurance coverage to German clientele looking for coverage abroad.
  In 1900 the company became the first insurer to obtain a license to distribute corporate policies. In 1904 Paul Von Naher took over the sole leadership of the company, as it moved into the US and other markets. Markets entered by 1914 included the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, France, the Scandinavian countries and the Baltic States, and Allianz had become the largest maritime insurer in Germany. The company suffered an early disaster in expansion, when the 1906 San Francisco earthquake caused the company to sustain 300,000 marks in losses. In 1905 the company acquired Fides Insurance Company, a firm that had innovated the first form of home invasion insurance. Other places it would expand into during the 1910s and 1920s included Palestine, Cyprus, Iraq, China, the Dutch Indies, Ceylon, and Siam.
caption: An early Allianz agent's plaque
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