absorbed by the Woolwich. Notable among them were the fraudulent Grays and the Gateway, successor to the Temperance Building Society. The Gateway acquisition in 1988 took assets up to £13 billion. By then, financial deregulation encouraged the Woolwich to diversify away from its traditional mortgage business. In 1989, the Woolwich launched its first subsidiary operation, a financial planning service. It also formed Woolwich Property Services and took over part of the estate agency operations of the Prudential Plc in 1991; by the late 1990s, it had a national chain of nearly 170 branch locations. Other ventures included offshore banking, Woolwich Guernsey; Woolwich Life; Woolwich Unit Trust Managers Limited; and Italian and French banking businesses. Demutualisation and takeover The Woolwich Equitable Building Society demutualised in 1997, giving up its mutual status to become a bank: Woolwich PLC was formed, giving shares to investing and borrowing members of the society, and listing on the London Stock Exchange. In August 2000, Barclays took over Woolwich PLC in a £5.4bn acquisition. Woolwich PLC thus joined the Barclays Bank Group of companies. The Woolwich brand-name was retained after the acquisition, and the Woolwich head office remained in Bexleyheath, south-east London, 4.5 mi from the original office in Woolwich. On 28 June 2006, Barclays announced that The Woolwich was to become the Barclays UK mortgage brand, supported by Barclays branches, and that Woolwich branches would be either closed or re-branded as Barclays. Associated changes to call centres affected up to 1,200 jobs, mostly at The Woolwich contact centre in Clacton-on-Sea, which closed at the end of 2007. Although the Woolwich name lived on as the brand used for Barclays mortgages, this was discontinued in 2015. Headquarters The Woolwich Equitable Building Society started in Powis Street, Woolwich, where it occupied various premises. From 1896 until 1935, it was headquartered at a purpose-built corner office at 111-113 Powis Street, after which it moved to larger premises at Eakes Place, now Equitable House at General Gordon Square. In 1989, it moved to new headquarters in nearby Bexleyheath, alongside the society's main administration and computer centre which had been based at the corner of Watling Street and Erith Road for many years. Following the takeover by Barclays, the Bexleyheath head office closed in 2005. In 2014, the Woolwich's former head office became the Civic Offices of Bexley London Borough Council. Equitable House continued as a branch office until 2007. In