Esther's Souk

Hi All,

What ?

Esther's Souk is a galactic financial market for insurance ,  banking and auctioning off the assets of bankrupt companies. It started off as a human style public house by Esther of Manchester, where merchants and miners used to meet to discuss business. 

Martian currency 

The Martian currency is a strong hard currency and is on a gold standard , in other words whilst  paper and e currency circulate , alongside gold coinage,  they are convertible on demand to physical  gold bars and coins.  It is divided into Noors ( a bar of 224 ounces of gold or 1 stone ) ,  Ducats(a 1 ounce of gold coin )  and a Furling ( a quarter of an ounce gold coin).

Human currency is also linked to gold, so the exchange rates mean one Noor buys :

£200,000
$320,000
€450,000
¥ 35,000,000

Martian Banking and insurance

Mars has no central bank and this function is carried out by Her Majesty's Imperal Treasury. Regulation is informal and should any bank be taking on too much risk, they are summoned to the Lord High Treasurers office for a "raising on the eyebrows" , which is enough to bring wayward banks and insurers into line. There is a strict no bail out policy and banks are simply taken over and liquidated within 48 hours.

The banking and insurance industry is strictly split into 8  recognised categories :

1. Personal
2. Business
3. Investment
4. Private ( for the mega rich)
5.Safety Deposit ( for e currency and any physical valuables. These banks aren't allowed to use any deposits, but charge fees to keep the deposits 100% safe)
6. Captive (banks owned by businesses who act as banker or insurer to their parent company)
7. Reinsurance
8. Merchant Banking (purchasing equity in companies rather than loans)

In addition every citizen and resident of Mars is given a Treasury credit disk (similar to a pocket  calculator)  which act as as de facto bank account where taxes, benefits, refunds etc are paid . This device can be used to pay external vendors within the empire. There are modest fees for transactions In addition citizens can (like mobile phones) buy private credit disks, thus by passing banks altogether, thus making them less "too big to fail". The difference is that you have to pay fees for renting and transactions.

Where is Esther's Souk?

An  volcano on Mars or Bahar , located in the imperial ocean. In English Latin Elysium Mons. In native Martian Koor I Esther (mountain of the star).  Esther's Souk is located on the summit caldera.

Facts

Elysium Mons is a volcanic formed island , some 240 kilometres in diameter and 16 kilometres high.  It is rich in minerals and metals, which are extensively mined. The permanent population is 178  million , but tourism and commuters bring the daily total of people to at least a billion.  The summit caldera is some 20 kilometres long, 5 kilometres deep  and has been flooded by water .  Numerous islands and underwater settlements  have been constructed. 

How it works 

The Souk is an marketplace rather than a bank or insurer and is permitted to take on more risk than mainstream institutions.

There are two sides to the Souk. The Houses and the Brokers. The Houses are the managing agents of syndicates  (pools of money)  who use this cash for insurance, investment and banking purposes. The brokers are employed by businesses and individuals to obtain credit, investment  and insurance from the houses. These policies are often more risky or difficult to obtain than in the mainstream markets.

The Houses- mostly partnerships and familiar concerns-  raise cash by forming and managing syndicates . These syndicates are formed for a specific purpose and length of time. Syndicates sell a specific amount of units to investors  , with a unit having a face value of 100 Noors;  they can be bought and sold on the open market, but the syndicate can't issue new units .   The Houses take 2% as an administration fee from this money , the rest is put into a fund  for loans, investments and for  insurance capacity. At the end of the syndicates life, the fund's asset value is returned to the syndicate in cash, which is distributed  to unit holders , less 20%  for the House. The aim is to at least recoup the initial face value of the units sold and a profitable return.

Esther's today 

The Souk has over 1,000 Houses  managing 63,000,000 syndicates and total capital capacity of  over N 60,000  quadrillion, spanning most of the universe . There are some 4,680 accredited brokering firms. Unlike other markets business is conducted face to face "at the House  bar" and there is a bell to signify first and last orders. Rounds describe a situation in which syndicates spread the risk by taking percentages of the risk. And a shofar blows anytime there's a big loss.

The original public house is still in use , although the Soul itself is located on an adjacent island and is housed in a building modelled after the palace of Versailles.