Pre-ChaNES: Into the Void

[Vertinari118]

A large research firm called Pancorp (as in the Greek, I think, God of nature) based in Europe, if Iggy will have me. Mainly does contract work for the governments of Europe and colonies but sometimes it will work for other corps and private individuals if they have the money. May also work for other governments such as China and USA but Europe gets priority. Famed for its extensive research into bio-tech and biology and genetics but will research any area. Small security force but quite rich.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

I'd be fine, Europe and the IC are still free-market systems.

 

[Vertinari118]

Pancorp
CEO: The Pan, note all CEOs assume the name Pan when they come to office. (Vertinari118)
Headquarters:Oxford, England, Earth
Services: Reseach, designing and limited manufacturing of various in-house designs
Technologies:
Security Force:
Security Craft:
Income:
Assets:
Holdings:
Employees:
Publicity:
Projects: N/A
History: Pancorp was founded in the early 2030s to develop bio-tech hense its name. It has slowly grown in power and now holds most of the goverment contracts for research in Europe and several in other counties as well. It posseses a small security force to protect its secrets. It has recently gained a small branch in Asgard.

OOC: Here are the stats which I can fill in Chardra. I have assumed I am allowed to play but am ready to stand corrected.

 

[Symphony D.]

Retroactive deletion.

 

[Ekolite]

OOC: Um... you are aware of the current political situation?


Why is a biotech company working on extremely high-end physics that is in no way applicable to biology?


Uh oh, time-travelers! Everyone, get your meson cannons!

Not funny. There's no need for that last part at all. I would expect they are working on stigma technology because just about everyone is, afterall, whoever has the best stigma technology has the greatest advantage in space. Just think of them as a Space Research Firm.

IC: Tyrelia, of the Interstellar Commonwealth, would welcome the skills and services that Pancorp would bring, should they so wish to set up reserach facilities in our system. Ares, in particular, is regularly discovering new species that may interest a Bio-Space Firm.

 

[flyingchicken]

A biotechnology research firm doesn't need to do Stigma physics research unless Stigma physics has direct applications in the field of biotechnology, or they're trying to find some.

Seeing that they hail from the far future, there is just one "big question" in my mind right now: Have they found a way to travel back through time in their integrated Stigma-physics-biotechnology research? Hmmm...

 

[Symphony D.]

Retroactive deletion.

 

[Ekolite]

OOC: Sorry, that makes no sense either. Biology has jack-all to do with space research right now other than micro-gravity and zero-gravity research, the bulk of which has already long-since become a common field of study. And that itself is a world away from Stigma research.

IBM does not make soft drinks. Coca Cola does not make tires. Wal-Mart does not sell airplanes. Corporations--all the existing pseudo-MetaNats (none of which qualify as MegaCorps--the definition of a MegaCorp is universal product development and distribution) have tight specializations. Furthermore, the goal of every company is not to "have the greatest advantage in space." Companies exist to make money, not to dominate the future of mankind or to propound an ideology or to compete with nations. If he wants to be an aerospace company, he can be an aerospace company. But you're not randomly going to have aerospace+biology companies, no more than you would have entertainment+terraforming companies or food distribution+arms manufacturer companies. Business doesn't work that way. You pick a field and dedicate yourself to it or you will be destroyed by your competitors who are more serious about it. If you are truly massive, you can afford to pick several fields. But one that everybody and their dog in the aerospace and physics fields are already researching? Don't count on it.

Also, take your disdain for me elsewhere. I'm not being critical, I'm pointing out out of character inconsistencies and nonsense, things which as you have just demonstrated, cannot be defended, and which should be fact-checked. You of all people should know I can be much harsher if I choose to be. You can continue with despising me somewhere else, because you're making Mt. Everest out an ant-hill right now.

Terraforming and new other-planetery species could easilly be of interest to a Biologist, surely? In my book both of them are classified as Biology. I admit that stigma research is probably going a bit far but there are some Biological interests in space.

 

[Symphony D.]

Terraforming and new other-planetery species could easilly be of interest to a Biologist, surely? In my book both of them are classified as Biology.

OOC: And you need to know how to build a warp drive to get to them instead of just hopping on somebody else's transport? Or just buying such a transport? Does a biologist interested in studying bacteria living in a reactor have to know how to build the reactor before he starts? I don't recall xenobiologists looking for life on Europa having to know how to build a Delta II rocket.

 

[Ekolite]

Yes.... I'm agreeing with you..... for once .

 

[Vertinari118]

Edited to please everyone, I hope, but whats wrong with working for other goverments? If they don't want me the say no and if Europe don't want me doing it they make scary threats, or poilte requests, in my direction.

 

[Symphony D.]

Retroactive deletion.

 

[Vertinari118]

In fact case view that as SolFed.

 

[flyingchicken]

CEO: The Pan, note all CEOs assume the name Pan when they come to office. (Vertinari118)

Vertinari118, I expect a funny story as to how this came to be (unless, of course, it is more sinister than that--dun dun dun).

... Please?

 

[Vertinari118]

I will try to get a funny story out of it.

 

[Masada]

Diversification perhaps? Type Toyota into Google and look at what they are into, Finance, and Agricultural Biology (grand total of 316212 employees according to the Company profile), General Electric has a hand in the following (courtesy of its site), Aircraft Jet Engines, Electricity, Entertainment, Finance, Gas Turbine, Generation, Industrial Automation, Lighting, Medical Imaging Equipment, Medical Software, Motors, Railway Locomotives, Wind Turbines (grand total as of December 2007, 327,00 employees).

Diversification reduces risk, by diversifying your income stream, its common sense unless you have an industry which favours oligopolistic competition or monopoly. And even then companies tend to reach a point in oligopolistic competition where it becomes better to invest into other fields because the return to capital dips down (law of diminishing returns and all that).

If you’ve ever looked at a large company’s corporate structure, you will notice the fact that they have beautiful things ABC Pty Limited Holdings, ABC Limited Holdings, ABC Holdings Limited Pty etc. Why? Because of taxation, actuarial methodology etc, business never makes sense, ever. It might be a perfectly legitimate means of dodging tax, heck if Australia’s corporate legislation doesn’t change into that NES, researching into Stigma would make perfect sense, for every research $ spent you get a 100% tax deduction, you can clean massive sums of money like that all tax free…

It’s not unmanageable to have two totally separate business units, split the board run them through separate holding authorities to limit risk, different classes of shares or what have you. Its pretty common corporate policy…

Vert elect to have it make Gizmo's and Hodat's if you want...

EDIT: @ Chandrasekhar: Sorry.

 

[Symphony D.]

It’s not unmanageable to have two totally separate business units, split the board run them through separate holding authorities to limit risk, different classes of shares or what have you. Its pretty common corporate policy…

OOC: In Asia. Toyota and its ilk like Mitsubishi and the other Keiretsu, along with the Korean Chaebol are derivatives of the Zaibatsu style of business groups. They're known in the West as Vertical Monopolies. Such have become virtually extinct in the West, and as long as corporate controls remain in place to prevent gross abuses of power, will continue to do so. They are also only federations or confederations of companies bearing the same name--not singularly ruled companies as is depicted here. "Toyota" is not a singular company--it is many companies bearing the same name.

While that doesn't prevent corporations from working together to achieve directives or form alliances (or even closer, Groups), it does generally prevent them from forming vast megacorporations under a single name and a single corporate office (which are vertical and horizontal monopolies) dedicated to controlling all aspects of all available markets in order to secure revenue, and it does generally cause them to diversify into related fields (for example General Dynamics makes planes and tanks), rather than completely unrelated fields.

Given government has been getting stronger and not weaker, the formation of megacorp-esque entities does not make sense in this setting, and as such, companies are likely to have relatively limited interests with some diversification, not diversification into fields at the opposite ends of research.

 

[Masada]

You have still yet to show any reason why he cannot diversify? There is nothing in business unusual about having totally different fields of research, but please if it were only an Asian thing explain GE?

Heck by way of example look at Orion Corp, ship manufacturing, environmental manipulation, industrial tech? Somehow they are all interrelated?

There’s an infinity of reasons why a company could have a duel research divisions, acquisition of a competitor who had a finger in the other pie which has outstripped the older more traditional field in terms of success? I have not argued that a firm could have a finger in every pie, it’s impractical, but having a finger in a few pies is not impractical or terribly revolutionary.

As an aside government surely must be terribly strong if a company can rule a planet all of its own, change into a pseudo nation, more than likely dodge tax in the offing, and probably completely ignore you. What jurisdiction has control over that?

 

[Symphony D.]

You have still yet to show any reason why he cannot diversify?

OOC: I didn't say he couldn't, I said it didn't make sense.

but please if it were only an Asian thing explain GE?

And for every law, there shall be an exception...

Heck by way of example look at Orion Corp, ship manufacturing, environmental manipulation, industrial tech? Somehow they are all interrelated?

Considering you need industry to build ships, and those ships take people to generally crappy planets which must be improved: YES! Package Deal!

There’s an infinity of reasons why a company could have a duel research divisions, acquisition of a competitor who had a finger in the other pie which has outstripped the older more traditional field in terms of success?

I just explained to you the reason the fields of ship manufacturing, environmental manipulation, and industrial technology could be interrelated. This implies I have an imagination.

However, I have yet to imagine a way that splicing sections of DNA together and rewriting them can be related to hurtling chunks of metal the size of aircraft carriers across 1000 LY.

Maybe you can do it for me?

[...] and probably completely ignore you.

Governments permit quite a number of things unless they have reason to do otherwise.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Given government has been getting stronger and not weaker, the formation of megacorp-esque entities does not make sense in this setting, and as such, companies are likely to have relatively limited interests with some diversification, not diversification into fields at the opposite ends of research.

I should note that both government and corporations have been getting stronger, and that corporations have been getting stronger faster than governments have, but broadly speaking, governments still easily retain the upper hand. We're getting to the point where genuine megacorps could be a reality, as I see it, though you're correct in saying that we're not there yet.

EDIT: @ Chandrasekhar: Sorry.

Public discussion is good.

OOC: Here are the stats which I can fill in Chardra. I have assumed I am allowed to play but am ready to stand corrected.

Yeah, I'll go ahead and add you to the stats as I update them.