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.

[hobgoblin]

im only guessing, put putting it close to on on par with S-K may not be far off...

[Exodus]

ask yourself this, how big is military in 2070?

[ShadowDragon8685]

I would think that Ares would have tried to snap up everything they could, even the things that overlapped.

For example, let's use Trix and Fruit Loops. Let's say that Ares owned Trix, and CATco owned Fruit Loops. When CATco starts sinking, Ares starts 'salvaging'. They could leave Fruit Loops, because they already have a fruity cereal, and taking it would leave them with two competing products, which generally a company dosen't like. But! If they don't take Fruit Loops, Mitsuhama Computer Technologies will branch out into the fruity breakfast cereal market, by taking Fruit Loops. So Ares takes Fruit Loops, they gain modest profit overall, but they prevent MCT from breaking into the market, which means they gain overall.


And in other news, Mitsuhama orders a reprisal Shadowrun on the Fruit Loops factory. Fruity loops of cereal fly everywhere as the grain explosions go off.

[Cynic project]

Ares is most likely one of the 5 biggest corps in the world. The first oen being SK. Other big ones would Neo-net, Aztech.. and one the japn corps. Ares was bigger than Cross was in a lot of ways, but the key thing is that they are one three corps too have 2 votes on the CC. So, they tend to get their way more than a few other AAA's.

[SL James]

[booklord]

Well we know Ares grabbed Bioleve and Fletchette Armaments. I imagine they went after all military,

Ares undoubtably put a high priority and eating up any Cross aerospace, military, and personal weapons divisions. In particular they got Fletchete Armaments.

Ares gets a boost from getting Bioleve back from Cross but I think the most of Cross's cybertechnology, biotechnology and medical services divisions would have been heavily targetted by corps like Shaiwase and Yamatetsu.

Crash 2.0 and the wireless revolution probably wiped out the Cross Matrix Technology division. Not much of value left to take.

Cross's electronic and consumer goods were probably targetted heavily by Ares as well. What heavy Industry Cross had probably came next.

[Nath]

Every subsidiary of Cross Applied Technologies had a minimum of half-plus-one of its shares owned by Cross. That's the very definition of a subsidiary. It means that nobody can buy those companies out if Cross doesn't first decide to sell (the only exception would be Cross first losing the subsidiary to a seizure in debt, and Ares buying it from the bank). And unless Cross goes for some blind public offering, it still decides whom it sells to (and blackmailing is not an option, we're talking about Cross, Surrateau, Aurelius, people whose life were destroyed by Knight and Ares). And making the highest bid to get Cross assets without regard to the actual cost would be a completely counter-productive strategy for Ares, giving Cross more money than it would had otherwise gained from that sale for the sole sake of Knight saying "ahahah, I have your toys, aha" in front of Lucien Cross' graves.

Cross wouldn't sell subisidiaries that are really profitable, unless it aims at concentrating the company on its core markets (so, anyway, it should never sell the computer business). Everybody would try to buy the profitable assets put for sale, thus forcing Ares to bid higher than it should (at least, Ares probably has a better knowledge than the other megas of what was working and what wasn't -when they weren't the one responsible for problems-).

Personnaly, I admit Ares bought off parts of Cross only because a canon source says so. But I'd keep it somewhat limited in scope and range. The most concerned should be the media assets and others Aurelius brought with him (a move which wasn't much more realistic) where ties remained, and companies nobody else wanted to buy because Ares already had crushed them (having bought their supplier, planted mole within their staff, copycat their technology...).

[booklord]

Bioleve was stolen by Cross from Ares.
Ares stole it back.

I can only conclude that Biolieve must not have been 50% owned by either corp. Now they have controlled 50% of the proxies giving them complete control of the corp's board and leadership, but they could not have had 50% ownership.

[mfb]

Nath, there are several things you're not taking into account. first, as booklord pointed out, not all the companies under Cross's umbrella were necessarily outrighted 50% Cross property. many were probably 40% Cross and 10% Cross-controlled proxy. get control of those proxies, and suddenly Ares can control 50% of a formerly Cross-held company.

second, Cross-owned stock is controlled by many, many different people. if Cross owns 50% of Company X, that 50% is probably managed (along with several other holdings) by Manager Y, who takes his orders from Manager Z, who takes his orders from Vice-President In Charge of Whatever A, and so on. anyone in that link can be leaned on, bought out, tricked, replaced, or whatever--the end result of which is that suddenly, there's someone in charge of Cross's 50% of Company X that's willing to sell that stock to Ares.

[m00p]

It is not like Ares had to apply a ton of pressure in the first place, after Lucien Cross died, his will undoubtedly bequeathed his shares to multiple parties (with his son getting at least half) But, in the same way that Damien Knight is Ares, Lucien Cross was CATco, so, after the founder, major shareholder, president, CEO and visionary of the mega dies as the matrix (where all of the corps real money is) crashes, things must have looked incredibly bleak for the corp's future, it is reasonable to assume that people wanted out of CATco stock, and Ares was more than happy to help.

It is not like CATco's board of directors was in a position to make demands about selling off useless pieces of the corp, they were looking out for their own necks, as Aurelius disappeared after the corps demise, trying to save what face he had left after Ares hostile take over.

[SL James]

Plus Bernard Cross was suggested to be rather, well, stupid.

[m00p]

So, to answer my own questions:

[/quote]So roughly what precent of CATco was purchased by Ares after the crash?[/quote]

33%-40% of what was left of viable CATco assets

[booklord]

[m00p]

I corrected the comment nearly immedeatly, I am sorry for mistaking your name

[booklord]

[Sepherim]

I'd say most of the computer divisions in Cross were not ready for the wireless era. The tons of losses due to the Crash and not being prepared for it's aftermath would make an interesting base for explaining why it had to sell all it did. That said, I bet Ares would go mainly for the aerospace divisions, and weaponry, which wouldn't modify that much their own amount of points in the tables that appear in Corporate Download, because IIRC those tables didn't represent raw company size, they represented which part of the whole market the corp "owned"... and Ares is already almost a monopoly in both...

[SL James]

"These go to eleven."

Actually, Aerospace and Militech already go to eleven.