Megacorporations of the World
“
If a person is wealthy enough, they are afforded the rights of a corporation.”
A megacorp is a corporation with the power to issue money that is recognized by the IMF. Even in 2075, corporations are not allowed to produce fiat currency and corporate money is technically a
bond that becomes backed in other currency after a certain amount of time has past (usually 5 years). These are called “currency-backed-currencies” or “CBCs”. Megacorps achieve their status by being very large and powerful, but also by having control over a large portion of a key industry: Biotech, Commodities, Energy, Finance, and Telecom. Megacorps are all diversified to one degree or another, they really are tremendously titanic syndicates. Each Megacorp is diversified into being both a horizontal and vertical monopoly in its field, and also have numerous holdings in other industries and around the world.
From the standpoint of the megacorp, issuing a CBC is like getting an interest-free
loan that might not ever be asked to be paid back. So it's certainly a win-win as far as they are concerned. However, economic realities still exist, and if they issued
too much of such currency, it would undergo hyper-inflation and lose purchasing power (but still have to be paid back in five years with money that was still worth something). So you'd
think that maybe simple self interest would keep the currency printings modest and within predicted currency demand to keep inflation levels low. And you'd be wrong. Several megacorps went down in the fifties because the lure of the printing press for short-term profit was simply too great. In 2075, the IMF operates rather strict oversight on how much CBC each corporation is allowed to print. It's a complex formula based on total holdings, term profits, and expected regional demand in the projected currency deployment zones. Violating the CBC limits imposed by the IMF would be a very big deal, and no megacorporation does it (at least, that anyone can tell).
Biotech
“
If you don't have your health, you don't have anything.”
Mankind's first wish, above all others, is to
not die. And so it is relatively unsurprising that over the 21st century the industry that has grown the fastest is healthcare and biotechnology. In honor of this fact, the IMF started assigning megacorporate status to biotech firms when they were still substantially smaller than other corporations afforded the honor. This caused a lot of resentment in the forties and fifties, but consistently massive growth of the industry has closed whatever gap might have existed. Not that this keeps the other megacorporations from referring to the Biotech firms as “upstarts”.
Blue Hand
- World Headquarters: Chicago, New Egypt
Blue Hand provides healthcare to more people than any three other healthcare providers on Earth. They provide insurance, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and cybernetics. They also provide emergency services such as ambulances, fire protection, and police contractors for areas that have them. The pharmaceuticals provided by Blue Hand are not legal in all jurisdictions, and in many regions they operate essentially as drug dealers.
Immortelle
- World Headquarters: Marseilles, Occitania
Healthcare from Immortelle is incredibly expensive. They have positioned themselves as
the provider of luxury healthcare needs. They have the finest spas, the finest ritual thaumaturgists, and the highest grades of body modification. And it comes with the highest price tag you can imagine. Actually, you can only imagine it, because they provide services that are so expensive that
there are no listed price tags. They have heavy penetration into Helheim and Atlantis, and claim to have magitech procedures unmatched by Earthly science.
Splicex
- World Headquarters: Madras, Vijayanagar
Splicex is the world's leader in genetics, and they are responsible for most of the food that you eat. Not the actual
growing of it, but the
design. Eating food that hasn't been genetically modified is downright dangerous, since it sometimes develops magenetic qualities, so people just don't do it. Splicex are the reason that when you order a corndog it is blue, but it doesn't ever start flying around and breathing fire and stuff.
Commodities
“
Wealth that cannot be touched is just the idea of wealth.”
The world economy of 2075 exists in a state of consistently low industrial utilization. Simply put: there is a
lot more productive
potential than there is actual production. And one of the main limiting factors is raw materials. Where the raw materials go, industry, employment, and economic prosperity follow. Corporations that control enough of the world's commodities trade that they can dictate where economic booms and busts will happen are granted megacorporate status to save time.
A/V
- World Headquarters: Rio de Janeiro, Amazonia
A/V stands for Amazonian Vale, which was created by a merger of several South American mineral and agricultural producers and traders. They control a plurality of tropical goods, which considering the importance of rubber and sugar to the modern economy, is a really big deal.
The Folis Group
- World Headquarters: Cape Town, South Africa
The Folis Group is essentially a collective of criminal syndicates that operate as cartels for various goods such as gems, metals, and hardwoods. A relatively recent entry into the megacorporate roster, the Folis Group still issues its commodity-backed currency, which is redeemable for diamonds. This exists in parallel with their standard megacorporate currency-backed-currency, which they now also issue.
Agrencore
- World Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
The world's largest trading house for raw materials of all kinds is the Agrencore Core, an arcology in Geneva dedicated to determining who should get the copper, and who should get the gold. Agrencore does not strictly speaking
produce anything, but they virtually own or partially own almost all real world goods at some stage of production.
Energy
“
Power is Strength.”
The power demands of 2070s society are incredible. Despite the advances in power efficiency, there are simply a
lot more electronic devices in 2075 than there were at the beginning of the century. Peak oil has happened, and there is not enough energy to go around. Those companies that provide the world's go juice are afforded megacorporate status.
Standard Oil
- World Headquarters: Dallas, Lonestar Republic
Before the collapse of antitrust legislation in the thirties, Standard Oil was two companies in the top ten. Now it is only one. Standard Oil reformed and merged with companies through the Americas like Pemex and Petróleos. They are also big into mining, and are the world's source for literally half of global demand for rare earths.
Gazprom
- World Headquarters: Moscow, Russia
Originally the state-owned oil company o the Soviet Union, Gazprom is now a megacorp that does mining and drilling all over the world. They also run the Red Army, using it as their own private army to protect corporate interests, and to rent out to countries and syndicates that need extraordinary firepower.
State Grid
- World Headquarters: Beijing, Wei
The largest provider of power in East Asia. They have several of the world's largest hydroelectric dams as well as maintaining 4 out of 5 of the largest nuclear reactors. State Grid is also a major space player, operating the Tiangong-2 space station and having several power satellites.
The Green
- World Headquarters: Lagos, Benin
The Green controls remaining oil fields from West Africa to the Middle East. But their biggest claim to fame is their massive set of solar collectors in the Sahara Desert.
Finance
“
Banks are where the money is.”
Providers of financial services are afforded megacorporate status by the IMF if it finds that they already control sufficient amounts of capital that they could crash the world economy without destroying themselves by going on strike. An important thing to remember is that while banks control a lot of money, they aren't
really very interested in giving loans to individuals. They give loans to
corporations and
governments. And to a lesser extent to the salaried employees of those permanent institutions. In 2075, pretty much anyone could simply get a new Anchor and move to the Caledonian Wildlands, so no one without a garnishable salary is considered safe enough to lend to at any interest rate – no matter how much they normally earn or what they own as potential collateral. The only people who do small business loans these days are the Triads and the Mafia.
BHB
- World Headquarters: Hong Kong, Hong Kong
BHB is the largest banking institution in Asia.
Monolith Corporation
- World Headquarters: Calcutta, United Bengal
Monolith owns human capital. People who have valuable skills sell the rights to those skills to Monolith and then Monolith
resells those skills to corporations that have use of them. Then, if necessary, they ship the people with those skills across the planet to go provide them. It's like a global staffing firm, or possibly like human slavery, depending on how you look at it. Monolith has even taken contracts with entire countries in order to maximize employment by assigning people who have needed skills to do needed work.
FED
- World Headquarters: Boston, Union Territories
FED is what was made out of the United States Federal Reserve after it completely lost governmental oversight in the thirties. Until the various regional governments stood up to start printing their own money, FED had essentially “all the money”, and when they went private they went on an
unprecedented shopping spree. To this day it is actually unclear how much they own, since they keep records of that sort of thing pretty secret. But they own land, they own brands, they own subsidiary corporations, and they even have controlling interests in some of the privatized governments like the Singapore Corporation.
Telecom
“
Who will obey an unheard command?”
Running the world requires information infrastructure, a fact formally acknowledged by the IMF by recognizing any corporation that controls enough communication and data management that the economy can't really limp along without them by affording them the rights of megacorporation. These corporations produce enormous amounts of research and are
constantly spying on each other and arguing over data management standards. Every one of them produces real world devices of many different types, and all of them have quite impressive space programs. But the
reason that they have megacorporate status is that they basically have veto power over The Network mirroring itself in their controlled regions.
MaBell
- World Headquarters: Kansas City, Colorado
MaBell is the reformed remnants of the American Bell Telephone Company, now reunited after anti-trust legislation stopped existing in the thirties. In the meantime, the different Bell successor companies had merged with numerous electronics, research, and industrial firms – each attempting to out compete their rival successors through vertical integration. After reintegration, many of those partnerships remain, and several MaBell subsidiaries continue to be in competition with each other to this day.
SKYNet
- World Headquarters: London, Albion
With the privatization of the old BBC and Britain's military communications network, the SKY Network became one of the biggest players in news and space exploration. In 2075, SKYNet provides reasonable rates on military intelligence to governments and non-governmental syndicates around the world.
Ichi
- World Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan
Ichi is the largest Zaibatsu in Japan, and has holdings from automobiles to personal electronics to food to shipping. But what they are
really known for is their IchiSystem that integrates Ichi Anchors to Ichi data transmission pathways and guides people through Ichi shopping channels. Almost everyone in the world knows their slogan “Ichi is number one”.
ShinCo
- World Headquarters: Bangkok, Siam
ShinCo has had a pretty rocky relationship with many of the military governments that Siam has had over the years, but it has used these times of forced exile to expand into markets throughout South Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East. Today, ShinCo is the largest media provider in the Southern Hemisphere, and they have used this power to force the Siamese King to return their property in the country of origin. Their arcology in Bangkok is as much to put pressure on the Siamese government as it is to conduct business.