In the late 1980s the retail brokerage firm Smith Barney was owned by Primerica Financial Services. Commercial Credit purchased Primerica in 1988, for $1.5 billion. In 1992, they paid $722 million to buy a 27 percent share of Travelers Insurance. By the end of 1993, the merged company was known as Travelers Group Inc. In September 1997, Travelers acquired Salomon Inc. (parent company of Salomon Brothers Inc.), for over $9 billion in stock, and merged it with its own investment arm to create Salomon Smith Barney.