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
Willis Tower the law firms of Schiff Hardin and Seyfarth Shaw. Morgan Stanley plans to move to the building in 2019, and to become the building's fourth-largest tenant by 2020. In 1969, Sears, Roebuck & Co. was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicago's Loop. Sears asked its outside counsel, Arnstein, Gluck, Weitzenfeld & Minow (now known as Arnstein & Lehr, LLP) to suggest a location. The firm consulted with local and federal authorities