Title Insurance and Trust Company, often called "TI", opened for business on January 15, 1894, with about 30 employees. TI was the direct outgrowth of the merger of two earlier companies, the Abstract and Title Insurance Company and the Los Angeles Abstract Company, which had been started in the real estate boom of the 1880s. The original founders of TI were William H. Allen Jr., Otto F. Brant and Oliver P. Clark, who later became known as "the A.B.C.s." When TI began operation, the population of the city of Los Angeles was 66,000, and the county population, 122,000. In 1992, Ticor was acquired by Chicago Title & Trust, which issued the first guarantee policy in Cook County, Illinois, in 1881. In 2000 Fidelity National Financial Inc. (NYSE: FNF), the premier real estate service company, providing title insurance and other real estate-related services, acquired the Chicago Title Corporation, creating the largest title organization in the world.