The Times reported today that the Alliance Assurance Co., one of the largest British insurance firms, had been removed by the Jordanian Government from its lists of enterprises boycotted for trading with Israel and cleared for doing business in Jordan. The report said that Alliance officials apparently had convinced the Jordanian Government that the company has no dealings with Israel.
The Times commented that the Jordanians apparently had overlooked the fact that the firm was founded in 1824 by Sir Moses Montefiore with the participation of Nathaniel Meyer Rothschild, the first Rothschild to establish a bank in Palestine, and Benjamin Gompertz, a Sephardic Jew who was the leading actuary of his time. Sir Moses was the company’s first president. The company remains in Jewish hands. Lord Bearsted, a member of an established Anglo-Jewish family, is its present chairman.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.