TRAVELERS GROUP INC.

formerly called (190187) American Can Company, or (198793) Primerica Corporation, American conglomerate corporation whose subsidiaries are involved in such financial services as health and life insurance, mortgage and investment banking, securities brokerage, and assets management. As American Can Company, the company was noted for its production of metal cans for food and beverages, as well as other metal, paper, and plastic packaging and such consumer products as disposable cups, containers, towels, and tissues. Headquarters are in New York City. The American Can Company was founded in 1901 through the consolidation of several producers of metal cans for the food-canning industry. That year American Can monopolized 90 percent of the nation's can-making capacity; by 1913 the percentage had dropped to about 30 percent, and an antitrust suit brought by the U.S. government to dismember the firm failed in the courts (1916). Another antitrust decision in 1950 did restrict the company's selling procedures. American Can was notable for its pioneering research in tin-plating, container sterilization, and the use of aluminum in cans. In the 1970s the company began to diversify, adding specialty retailing operations, and in 1981 the company began to move out of manufacturing and transformed itself into a financial services conglomerate. This process concluded in 1986 with the sale of its remaining packaging operations to Triangle Industries, Inc., which also acquired the name American Can Company. The former American Can Company assumed the name Primerica Corporation in 1987. In 1993 Primerica bought the Shearson brokerage business of the American Express Company and merged it with Primerica's own firm, Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. That same year Primerica acquired the Travelers Corporation, a major insurance company. Travelers had been an innovative leader in the insurance industry from its founding by the stonecutter James Batterson in 1864. That year the Travelers Insurance Company sold the first accident insurance in the United States, and in 1865 it began selling life insurance, thus becoming the first company in the country to offer more than one type of insurance. By the time Batterson died in 1901, Travelers offered health, liability, and automotive insurance as well, at a time when many insurers still restricted themselves to a single line of insurance. In 1919 the company became the first to sell aviation insurance, and during World War II it underwrote the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bomb. Travelers expanded greatly in the economic boom after the war, and in 1965 it was renamed The Travelers Corporation. By 1993, though Travelers' assets were greater than those of Primerica, it was not as strong financially, having suffered substantial losses from its real estate investments. The new merged company retained the better-known Travelers name. In 1996 the Travelers Group, as the parent holding company was now called, bought the casualty and property insurance businesses of the Aetna Life and Casualty Company. In 1997 Travelers bought Salomon Brothers Inc., and merged that investment banking company with its own Shearson-Smith Barney unit to form Salomon Smith Barney Holdings Inc., one of the largest securities firms in the United States.