wholly owned subsidiary genre insurance and financial services founded 1862 headquarters 601 congress street boston massachusetts us products life insurance mutual funds long term care insurance retirement plan services college savings plans parent manulife financial website www.johnhancock.com john hancock financial is a loose term for a united states insurance company which existed in various forms from its founding on april 21 1862 until its acquisition in 2004 by the canadian insurance company manulife financial . it was named in honor of john hancock a prominent patriot . the company continues to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of manulife and its headquarters remains in boston massachusetts . john hancock financial network jhfn is the retail distribution company of john hancock life insurance company u.s.a. which is a wholly owned subsidiary of manulife financial corporation . 1 contents 1 timeline of corporate name and structure changes 2 investor sentiment index 3 references 4 external links timeline of corporate name and structure changes edit april 21 1862 the charter of the john hancock mutual life insurance company was approved by john a. andrew governor of massachusetts . john hancock advertisements and newspaper articles from the 1930s refer to it as the john hancock life insurance company . 1940s source refer to it as the john hancock mutual life insurance company . a july 2 1998 boston herald story john hancock mutual life insurance co. chairman is quoted we have always said quite clearly that we are not for sale stephen l. brown said moving to kill speculation about possible deals with bankboston or fleet financial group . there are simply no merger talks going on . in 2000 led by david f. d alessandro the company demutualized meaning that john hancock mutual life insurance company formally ceased to exist and a new company named john hancock financial services inc. came into existence . policyholders received shares in the new company in exchange for giving up ownership in the old . life insurance continued to be sold by an entity known as the john hancock variable life insurance company a subsidiary of john hancock financial services inc. on january 27 2000 shares of hancock stock started to trade on the new york stock exchange under the symbol jhf . on september 29 2003 it was announced that manulife financial corp. was acquiring john hancock financial services inc. for 10.4 billion . on april 29 2004 the existence of john hancock financial services inc. as an independent company formally ended . during 2004 manulife merged its original u.s. domiciled business units with the newly acquired company under the john hancock name . manulife continues to use the john hancock brand name for the majority of its u.s. businesses . investor sentiment index edit john hancock created an index called the john hancock investor sentiment index in 2011 . 2 the company describes the index as a quarterly measure of investors views on a range of investment choices life goals and economic outlook . 2 references edit about john hancock financial network . john hancock financial network . retrieved 8 april 2011 . a b john hancock inaugurates investor sentiment index . john hancock company website . 30 march 2011 . retrieved 8 october 2013 . external links edit john hancock financial manulife financial corporation retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title john hancock financial & oldid 743301498 categories companies based in bostonformer mutual insurance companiescompanies established in 1862life insurance companies1862 establishments in massachusettshidden categories pages using infobox company with unsupported parameters navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages fran ais edit links this page was last modified on 9 october 2016 at 01 21 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view