The Leandris Company (/li:andrɪs cəmpani:/ (Aeillan: /eitaireia: leiandri/))
Εταιρεία Λεανδρή
The Leandris Company is one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the known world, having come into position not only of extensive assets, but of significant territories throughout Leandris especially, but also along with other parts of the coast surrounding the Yulan Ocean and Tealastrian Sea. The Leandris Company is thus one of the most influential players in the region, and especially for small merchants and pirates, a terrifying one. The Company is also influential in the legislative halls of Artenos, Nikea, and it is argued even in some foreign states as well. The Leandris Company is, despite its immensity, still functionally a corporate structure, run at the highest levels by a board of trustees who elect a head of the company. The Company is thus effectively run by a handful of exceptionally powerful merchant families, largely from Artenos most of whom helped found the company initially.
Structure
The Leandris Company is, unsurprisingly a corporate structure, despite its vast size and territorial holdings. Instead of being managed by a civil authority, it answers instead to the powerful merchant families which founded it, and to its leader. Leadership is largely concentrated in the company's headquarters in Artenos, from which the major objectives of the company are issued. Underneath the headquarters are a number of disparate corporate holdings scattered throughout the port cities, and coasts of the Yulan Ocean and Tealastrian Sea. Running between them are porters and sailors who maintain the transit of cargo from the holdings to markets in Artenos and abroad, and ensure the flow of profits back to the headquarters.
The Leandris Company maintains a truly enormous fleet, rivaling that of even maritime states. Though a great many of these are the trade ships that carry the truly astonishing amount of cargo for the company, the company also maintains more than a few warships, which prove especially vital in fending off pirate attacks. Indeed, Company Warships are present enough to make attacking their cargo vessels a nearly suicidal endeavor. The Company also maintains a sizable force of marines within the fleet in order to eradicate pirate havens and extract concessions from weaker powers.
The Leandris Company is highly decentralized in organization, largely on account of the vast distances between its holdings with little other than seafaring as a viable means of maintaining lines of supply. As a result, many of the company's concessions, free ports, and company towns and cities operate with a great deal of autonomy, with much of the day-to-day operations handled by local corporate officers. These officers report to the company headquarters in Artenos, and in exchange receive supplies and manpower to carry out their duties. Those local company holdings which perform well are given additional resources and greater operational independence. Those that perform more poorly, however, are indeed given more resources, but see more direct control from Artenos, with mandates often imposed from gunboats. Those who are openly rebellious are often visited by a flotilla, and those that continue to rebel are bombarded into dust.
Public Agenda
Nominally, the Leandris Company's sole concern is the extraction of profits from the continent of Leandris. Over the decades of its operation however, the Company's scope has steadily expanded to become an ersatz state lording over a sizable portion of the Tealastrian Coast. The Company has thus expanded the scope of its operations, not only seeking to build profits, but the necessary influence that would allow it greater independence from the Republic of Artenos. The Leandris Company is however rather secretive about its practices and indeed limit access of those not on the company's payroll to only the front facing, commercial dealings with the company in order to keep prying eyes away from the political dealings and scheming, and in particular to ensure that the Artenesian Senate does not catch wind of the Company's push to obtain autonomy from the state.
Assets
The Leandris Company owns and maintains a great many assets. Within Leandris it claims dozens of ports and even entire citizens and broad swathes of land in the interior of the continent. This includes vast forests, a fair number of mines, and enormous plantations, as well as the only major drydocks in Leandris. In addition, it maintains a fleet of around two hundred ships. Most of these ships are cargo vessels, at least thirty, and possibly up to fifty are warships. Company vessels range from small caravels to massive galleons. It is rumored even that the Company has even contracted the construction of a Tymnandros to serve as its flagship. Additionally, the Company maintains a sizable number of marines. Company Marines are heavily armed and armored, approaching, or even surpassing those of Artenos itself, and vastly superior to the arms of most Leandran natives, and the average pirate.
History
The Leandris Company was founded in ER 387, by an alliance of Gitoxoi and Ilosi merchant families from Artenos. Initially a simple non-competition pact between the families over the matter of Leandris, the Company become increasingly integrated over its first few years of existence, formally seeking and obtaining a charter from the Artenesian Senate in ER 395. The Leandris Company would, with its first charter, be given formal sanction to establish trade ports on Leandris instead of simply making ports at natively held territories. This single change marked a dramatic shift in the operations of the company as it became incredibly aggressive towards the natives of Leandris using their fleets to bombard concessions out of the natives, and heavily armed marines to cut swathes of territory from Leandris proper.
After establishing itself throughout Leandris, the Company expanded the scope of its operations, establishing plantations, mines, and company towns throughout the territories it had captured, and building up extensive infrastructure. The Leandris Company, as a result quickly became one of the most influential organizations on the island of Leandris. The Company's largest action occurred in ER 388 when a flotilla of Company warships and a contingent of marines under L. Gaia Gitoxa, sacked the Leandran city of Hakka, burning much of the outer wards of the city, and forcing the governing council to turn over its port to the Company, thus securing a stranglehold on the northern coast of Leandris.
In the most recent decades, the Leandris Company has been slower growing, with relatively few profitable, easy to secure assets left in the Tealastrian Sea or the Yulan Ocean. Instead, the Company has focused on the building of a globe-spanning network of trade as well as further establishing themselves in the territories that they have captured. They have also become increasingly concerned with hunting and destruction of the pirate strongholds that remain in the prime trade lanes of the Company. To that end, the Leandris Company has sent a number of fleet groups to utterly destroy pirates, sinking vast numbers of pirate vessels and destroying more than a few strongholds.
Founding Date
AR 387
Type
Corporation, Commerce
Alternative Names
The Company
Demonym
Company
Location
Related Ethnicities
