Account Name change - How to preserve history?

We have an account for a company that will be acquired by a new company and so its name will change to the new one but we want to make sure we can preserve all the history we have in the system under the "old" company. The main contact for the company will be the same and we also want to preserve the information related to the contact that we already have. What would be the best way to go?

Do we create a new account record with the new name and link the existing contact to be its main contact?.... If so, do we lose all the info for this contact for all the works he did for the "old" company?