Aeternus Investigation

Year: 319 CE

After continued suspicion regarding Aeternus' activities, especially as it was increasingly becoming more and more of a monopoly, the CSIS launched a investigation into the conglomerate;

CSIS Investigation Report Organisation in question: Aeternus Main investigation supervisor: Gregory Zhukov The Investigation found that Aeternus seems to be no threat to the systemwide company competition. Details as follows: During our rating of the company employment policies we found little to no problems, with it actually rating very high in both employee polls and ethic checks. We found that this stretches through all of Aeternus' branches thanks to a special basic regulation document instated by Lebbuto Stone personally in the early days of the company. Although many Managers have tried to appeal for changes to increase their profits by for example having to pay workers less, this document has not seen many changes, and probably for the better. Their security and internal organization is also quite proficient. Aeternus' internal organization commonly referred to as "The Bureau" is responsible for all the company's organizational matters like handing out payments, contacting authorities for documents and tending to the digital network the company uses. Aeternus also contracts three other separate companies specialized in internal security to do checks on their members, systems and fight corruption. In regards to their high status on the systemwide market it was found that they placed among the top three providers in almost all sectors in which they specialize in. The only exceptions to this being: Aeternus Mining, as most of their produced resources are used up internally. Aeternus Security, which is still building up its fleet and hiring forces. Their high stand in the market gives them a large purchase power and consequently also produces reliable employment and job opportunities for other firms. For example since Aeternus currently does not have their own construction workforce they contract a lot of other companies, supporting those with their payments. When it comes to company corruption, scores vary from sector to sector. One interesting trend that was discovered was that the branches that are still closely managed by the CEO himself have been less prone to bribery. Those being: Aeternus Shipyards Aeternus Manufacturing One sector that naturally experiences a higher degree of corruption is Aeternus Security. Due to its mercenary nature it can't always be ensured that the goals of their contractors are "good". Furthermore it is naturally difficult to gain honor through coin, or swearing an oath to something you work for just for money and not out of ideals. When taking a look at a potential monopoly position in certain sectors, an interesting discovery was made. While Aeternus seems to dominate both the market for electronic goods and basic components and materials, they seem to keep their prices in a cheaper range than one may expect considering the quality of their products. They also offer different priced variants for most of their goods which haven't shifted in value for longer periods. It seems that despite the reduction in serious competition at the moment, Aeternus has not increased their prices even though people would probably still buy from them if they did. This hesitancy is mostly the work of Aeternus CEO though it is certainly not getting him much appreciation in the leaderboards. A problematic trend that was discovered is that Aeternus, when doing an extensive comparison, seems to be slowly flatlining in its profits. This is possibly due to the lack of sufficient large and reliable customers which are often crucial for the financial stability of any company. Aeternus' current method of handling the absence of large contractors was a rapid expansion to get a greater array of potential customers. However this also left the company with a now large infrastructure to support and it is getting more and more difficult to find new sectors to get revenue. Additionally, the good conditions of their workers consequently come at a high cost to Aeternus, with stores and factories that are especially careful to follow the basic regulations having a significantly reduced profit margin compared to others. To put it simply, most major steady funds are driven in by facilities under the management of Stone-opposing officials. The stubbornness of Stone to play into the cards of the more "economically" thinking executives could continue in three ways; All of the more "economic" people branch off into their own company/ies, making a definitive impact on Aeternus' revenue. They manage to drive Stone and his supporters out of the Aeternus company and meld it into something more "efficient". The company will slowly grow more corrupt as executives start to want to earn money on the side for their own gain. Our research also discovered that Aeternus is currently facing a leadership problem. It seems the company leaderboards are almost evenly split between people that support the actions of the company's CEO Lebbuto Stone and those that would rather see their own policies get adopted. During further investigations we found that some of them even left the company and created smaller rivals that are slowly catching up to Aeternus' leading position, though the means by which they achieve this are... questionable. End of report.

Following the investigations, Aeternus Security was indicted for being a 'possible unstable' and 'dangerous' organization thanks to its proneness to corruption, especially as it functions as a paramilitary organization, thus largescale inspections and continuous monitoring of Aeternus Security installations and ships was to take place, with any who refused to comply being subject to fines or possibly legal action and arrests. Regardless of the fact that Aeternus wasn't driving up prices and was lead by a restrained CEO, it still had a significant amount of control over the market and was thus a monopoly regardless of its policies, and was thus indicted of holding a monopoly over the CSIS' electronics market, though thankfully for Aeternus wouldn't necessarily be enforced unless if they began driving up prices. Additional investigations began onto companies run by former Aeternus managers.

Shuttles carrying inspectors, military advisors, police officers, and federal marshals began arriving on Aeternus Security installations alongside Hephaestus Station in order to launch a more indepth investigation into their methods, equipment, documentation, and records, soon being joined by Aeternus' own internal anti-corruption department (and one of their contractors 'SkathiCorp' who focused on employee background checks). This investigation revealed some cases of minor bribery among low-ranking individuals, though more incriminatingly the attacks during the Horizons Reach's Tour were able to happen thanks to a key member of Aeternus Security providing the pirates with weapons and information, leading to mass-arrests as Aeternus Security was officially downgraded to only offer personal security, though this didn't last very long either as the entire branch was dissolved shortly afterwards, allowing most of its assets and personnel to largely be bought up by various smaller security firms such as 'Protektos' (who bought the most), 'Locke Defence', and the Moebius Foundation, while all assets which weren't sold off were handed over to the newly established 'Aeternus Combat Solutions' which focused on selling weapons, armour, and shields for external usage rather than internal.