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 ’70s and early ’80s, acquiring the Allied Unit Trusts of which it was soon the major unit holder, 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.

Info gleaned from Wikipedia