How Large Is Ares in 2070?, How powerful would you make it? Options

[m00p]

After seeing all of the polls regarding which Mega people would work for, it seems that Ares is a crowd favorite, which lead me to start thinking about the actual size of Ares Macrotechnology.

It took me a while to piece this together but: CATco is gone, and Ares reaps the rewards, not only did Ares, "...swallow up a big chunk of Cross Applied Technologies following the Crash." (SR4, p. 42) But, the major source of competition and hinderances for Ares has been removed, leaving few road blocks in their growth.

So, relating this to Corperate Download:

CATco and Ares' corperate stats (Corporate Download, p. 120) reflects that Ares and CATco were relatively well matched, with Cross having a slight overall advantage in points, and Heavy advantages in Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence.

When it comes to assets themselves (Corperate Download, p. 124) of the Big Ten, CATco is the 9th most wealthy Mega, and Ares the 7th. A Closer examination of the table reflects that Ares and Cross did not have close competition in a ton of markets. CATco had a good position (had a rating of 6 or higher) in computer engineering, computer science, biotech, consumer goods, cybernetics and entertainment. Ares on the other hand, at the time of the buy out had a strong base in (once again, rating 6 or higher:) Aerospace (nearly a monopoly,) consumer goods, entertainment, heavy industry, military technology (once again, nearly a monopoly,) and service.

Here are my questions:

So roughly what precent of CATco was purchased by Ares after the crash?

How relevant are the asset points that Cross had in computer engineering and computer science? (It has been mentioned that the Matrix was going wireless soon anyway, the crash just allowed it to happen a bit sooner.)

Can we use common sense to assert that Ares did not purchase any assets they would not stand to make a profit from? In otherwords would everything purchased after the Crash likely be added to Ares total assets? (That is to say, nothing overlaps, or if it does, it is rebranded under a subsidary, like putting Fruit Loops and Trix on the market to compete with each other, but General Mills still makes makes all of the money.)

How many of Ares secrets got out? Did Knight ensure that his secrets stayed within? If anything did get out, how damaging would it really be to Ares' bottom line?

And finally, other than just renaming assets purchased from CATco, how much raw information was purchsed, and how does it help to propel Ares' research?

Anyway I know it is a lot of questions, but I am interested to hear answers. If you have the Corperate Download book, it would be great if you could in addition to answering some (if not all) of the questions, provide stats for your idea of the Ares of 2070.