Sears its naming rights to the building expired in 2003 it remained the Sears Tower until early 2009. In March 2009 London-based insurer Willis Group Holdings, Ltd., was given the building's naming rights to encourage them to occupy the building. The official renaming as the "Willis Tower" took place on Thursday, July 16, 2009, during a public ceremony hosted by Willis Group Holdings. In the 1990s, the company began divesting itself of many non-retail entities, which were detrimental to the company's bottom line. Sears spun off its financial services arm which included brokerage business Dean Witter Reynolds and Discover Card. It
Sears history of the old company, celebrating the original 1892 incorporation, rather than the 1906 revision, as the start of the company. Sears' successful 1906 initial public offering (IPO) marks the first major retail IPO in American financial history and represented a coming of age, financially, of the consumer sector. The company traded under the ticker symbol S, and was a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1924 to 1999. In 1906, Sears opened its catalog plant and the Sears Merchandise Building Tower in Chicago's West Side. The building was the anchor of what would become the massive Sears,