Corporations - anybody an idea?

[Nuristas]

Good Evening,

Let's start with the fact that I am aware that in Rifts money and costs are not always logical. That is kinda besides the point of my question but some things we do know:

We know it takes 30 million to keep Larsen's in the field for a month without combat pay.
We know Naruni stock went up hugely in a short burst

Do we have any idea about the value and/or profits of corporations like:

Northern Gun
Wellington Industries
Wilks
Naruni Enterprises
Bandito arms
Golde Age Weapons Company
Chipwell
Iron Heart Armaments, INC
MageFire Weaponry, INC

I haven't been able to find a good reference for it and it kinda bugs me not to be able to have an idea about how much money we are talking about.
I am asking because there are values of profits for businesses in the Black Market Handbook and one of my co-players wants to invest in a big corp with her ill-gotten gains.

If there are other companies you would say: invest in that one, any suggestions would be swell.

[Orin J.]

two of those are interimensional traders, and one's the black market so there's proably not one system that applies to all of them.

honestly the safe money is that a "corporation" in rifts is a much more ambiguous thing than we're used to as there's no agreed financial rule applied to everything. considering the RUE claims the coalition does 70% of the business in north america and somehow at the same time doesn't sell anything to virtually anyone i think asking for anything even resembling logical economics of the setting is madness.

[Nuristas]

two of those are interimensional traders, and one's the black market so there's proably not one system that applies to all of them.

honestly the safe money is that a "corporation" in rifts is a much more ambiguous thing than we're used to as there's no agreed financial rule applied to everything. considering the RUE claims the coalition does 70% of the business in north america and somehow at the same time doesn't sell anything to virtually anyone i think asking for anything even resembling logical economics of the setting is madness.

That I am very painfully aware of.
The goal was to get the best estimate of people who have been playing the game for a while.

That was it.

[Library Ogre]

A corporation in Rifts is a government whose main motivation is profit, and who produce goods or services to generate that profit.

[Prole]

two of those are interimensional traders, and one's the black market so there's proably not one system that applies to all of them.

honestly the safe money is that a "corporation" in rifts is a much more ambiguous thing than we're used to as there's no agreed financial rule applied to everything. considering the RUE claims the coalition does 70% of the business in north america and somehow at the same time doesn't sell anything to virtually anyone i think asking for anything even resembling logical economics of the setting is madness.

The CS made the credits that most transactions are done in and this currency is backed by all the people who buy and sell things for CS Credits. I think that is what the book means.

Do we know the population of the setting, or what the highest settings are for a corporation that doesn't have reach outside one continent, according to the books?

[slade2501]

well, as an example of comparison, the GM company posted a profit (after costs) of 10 billion in 2018. I would favorably compare that to Northern Gun as an equal size company. Their revenue (not profit but total money made) in 2017 was 144 billion dollars.

[The Beast]

Good Evening,

Let's start with the fact that I am aware that in Rifts money and costs are not always logical. That is kinda besides the point of my question but some things we do know:

We know it takes 30 million to keep Larsen's in the field for a month without combat pay.
We know Naruni stock went up hugely in a short burst

Do we have any idea about the value and/or profits of corporations like:

Northern Gun
Wellington Industries
Wilks
Naruni Enterprises
Bandito arms
Golde Age Weapons Company
Chipwell
Iron Heart Armaments, INC
MageFire Weaponry, INC

I haven't been able to find a good reference for it and it kinda bugs me not to be able to have an idea about how much money we are talking about.
I am asking because there are values of profits for businesses in the Black Market Handbook and one of my co-players wants to invest in a big corp with her ill-gotten gains.

If there are other companies you would say: invest in that one, any suggestions would be swell.

Best I can do would be to rank them from highest to lowest, which IMO would be:

Naruni Enterprises
Northern Gun
Bandito arms
Wilks
Golden Age Weapons Company
Chipwell
Wellington Industries
Iron Heart Armaments, INC (these guys are defunct now, aren't they?)

And I'm not familiar with MageFire Weaponry so I'm not ranking them, but I'm guessing they're the other multi-dimensional company that was mentioned so if that's the case I'd put them at number two.

[Library Ogre]

A corporation in Rifts is a government whose main motivation is profit, and who produce goods or services to generate that profit.

You know what, I'm gonna add to this:

I would be willing to bet, while most corporations are effectively governments, one of the key differences is that they are semi-democratic.

In Shadowrun, there was a nation called the Pueblo Corporate Council. They had two kinds of stock... residential, which made you a citizen, and preferred, which let you live and work in the country, but without voting rights. Owning more stock gave you more votes, but it was logarithmic... 10 shares didn't give you 10 votes. I don't recall the precise number, and I can't be arsed to look them up.

So, you might have some standing corporations where citizenship comes with dividends, and a vote in shareholders meetings.

[Blue_Lion]

Iron heart is out of business, the only thing left is a group of free booters/pirates.

[hup7]

We often take real world examples because it sits better in our head. But I doubt any of these are "public" companies as such. In my opinion they are more like family business / partnerships.

Would they want investment capital?
What is their supply chain? Is it legal?

They rarely operate in standard business mode - take Titan Industries, they have no need of money in the traditional sense. However resources and minerals are far more important to them.

I can imagine recycling would be a huge industry.

Now to the original question, the "value" of investment might not have anything to do with the total value of the company - more like how useful is THAT cash at THAT time. A multibillion dollar business might need cash flow to pay some bandits that are holding up a shipment, and thus might be happy to give a "share" of profits in return for the cash right at that time.

As to the coalition not selling much - they don't sell military equipment (as per most of the books) but they certainly farm and sell food and clothing and everything else for millions of people. They do sell military equipment to other nations (such as the NGR).

[Shark_Force]

Best I can do would be to rank them from highest to lowest, which IMO would be:

Naruni Enterprises
Northern Gun
Bandito arms
Wilks
Golden Age Weapons Company
Chipwell
Wellington Industries
Iron Heart Armaments, INC (these guys are defunct now, aren't they?)

And I'm not familiar with MageFire Weaponry so I'm not ranking them, but I'm guessing they're the other multi-dimensional company that was mentioned so if that's the case I'd put them at number two.

I would put wilks above bandito. we're told that a lot of common electrical components are actually produced by wilks and incorporated into all kinds of stuff made by other corporations in whichever book it is that introduced the CS banning wilks stuff, iirc.

[Killer Cyborg]

Do we really know which companies are corporations and which are sole proprietorships?

[MadGreenSon]

A corporation in Rifts is a government whose main motivation is profit, and who produce goods or services to generate that profit.

You know what, I'm gonna add to this:

I would be willing to bet, while most corporations are effectively governments, one of the key differences is that they are semi-democratic.

In Shadowrun, there was a nation called the Pueblo Corporate Council. They had two kinds of stock... residential, which made you a citizen, and preferred, which let you live and work in the country, but without voting rights. Owning more stock gave you more votes, but it was logarithmic... 10 shares didn't give you 10 votes. I don't recall the precise number, and I can't be arsed to look them up.

So, you might have some standing corporations where citizenship comes with dividends, and a vote in shareholders meetings.

I like this. It fits what we've seen for the most part and also plays up the differences between Rifts Earth and our world.

[Library Ogre]

They rarely operate in standard business mode - take Titan Industries, they have no need of money in the traditional sense. However resources and minerals are far more important to them.

I can imagine recycling would be a huge industry.

I figure resource reclamation is a big business everywhere. (Ctrl+F for "Big Bertha" to find it)