Banco di Mandragora

Banco di Mandragora (BM)

Established	1958
Headquartered	Mandragora, Beracanto, Pacitalia
Assets	Đ86,763,100,000,000 (10/2005)
Company value	Đ301,864,346,571 (10/2005)
CEO	Signore Mario Saburino-Sifanto
CFO	Signore Ambrosio Cantugali-Probunto
Board Chairman	Signora Lisa Maria Azanunta
Slogan	Banking simplified. (2001- )

Banco di Mandragora (PAX800: BM) -- English: Bank of Mandragora -- is Pacitalia's largest chartered corporate bank, both by assets and value. It has 19,540 branches in Pacitalia, as well as a further 6,581 outside the country. Through its marketed name, BM, it operates personal/retail, commercial and automated banking and financial services for 2,873,335,000 individual accounts in Pacitalia and 18 foreign countries (BM estimates, Oct/05). Respectively, these companies are known as BM, BM CommercePlus and BM FirstAccess.

History

Banco di Mandragora was created by the merger of Servizia Finanza Personali di Mandragora SpA and Gruppo Finanza dello Corporazionemu Beracanto SpA in 1958. To ensure success as a large bank, the two constituent parts of which were not previously considered 'major' in Pacitalian commerce, the Pacitalian government under Pacifist Prime Minister Grasiru Damescu (1957-65) absorbed the company as a Corporation of the Republic and renamed it Banco di Mandragora CFGP shortly thereafter. BM stayed in government hands until 1980, when Athena Papistikas and her Liberal government auctioned off the banking conglomerate to a group of twelve investors. By that time, BM had become the third-largest bank in Pacitalia by assets and corporate value, and the sale was worth about Đ23.7tn (inf-adj: Đ48.2tn, 1/2005). As the 1990s arrived, five of the twelve investors were bought out of their shares in the corporation, and by 1999, the company arrived at its current ownership, shared by the remaining two of the original 12.

In August 2003, BM surpassed rivals BNP Paribas, Pacibank and ABN Amro to become the largest bank in Pacitalia with its acquisition of Pacitalia's ninth-largest bank, a credit union called Banco Sigurantamo Coperativo (known publicly as BSC-Lock). The Pacitalian Financial Exchange, Securities and Bonds Commission (CSEP) approved the deal in 2001, but the terms were not fully agreed upon until that date, two years later. BM fully owns and operates BSC-Lock but has not rebranded it to include it as part of the BM family, thus, it has the appearance of still being independent of BM.

Activity

Market capitalisation and asset holdings: BM has, for four years, been the largest Pacitalian bank in terms of market capitalisation. In addition to this, BM's asset holdings are the highest of any bank in Gholgoth, at about Đ86.76tn (real), giving an average of Đ30,195.34 per account. The value of the company itself stands at about Đ301.8 billion.

Employment: BM ranks highly on corporate equality and fair treatment indexes, but is only third among Pacitalian banks for the number it employs. Due to the primary focus on the domestic banking market, BM has 100,883 employees as of October 2005; compared to its biggest rival, BNP Paribas, which, because of its larger focus on international commerce, employs nearly twice as many people.

Controversies and criticisms

BM has escaped quite a bit of controversy compared with other major banks around the world, but the embarrassment of being put in the hot seat hasn't escaped the bank.

Debit card mess-up

After 44 years of nearly glitch-free operations, a major error occurred at BM. In August 2002, a computer malfunction caused the account data of 2.1 million members to be resorted into the wrong ownership categories, thusly meaning the funds of those accounts could not be accessed because the system thought the personal identification numbers (PINs) it was receiving through NTS (the Pacitalian debit purchase transaction system) were incorrect, when in fact, they were not. It took BM nearly 4 days to fully rectify the mistake, and for those that only had that source of funds available to them, the four days were quite traumatic. BM did not issue an apology until pressured by the government's Ministry of Finance to do so. They also paid an 'apology reparation' of Đ500 into each account that was affected.

Anti-Sarzonian?

The second of only as many controversies BM has experienced in its 47-year history is criticisms and accusations by leftist parties in Pacitalia (particularly the Social Coalition Party) that the company is anti-Sarzonian. This stems from the comments of CFO Signore Ambrosio Cantugali-Probunto, who said late in 2004 that "investing in the Sarzonian market was not worth it". He retracted his comments and resigned, but was secretly rehired again in April 2005, much to the chagrin of the Incorporated Government of Sarzonia. Nothing of the sort has been proven, though it is important to note that, coincidentally, BM's presence in Sarzonia is the least of the ten largest banks in Pacitalia, totalling just under Đ92bn (7/2005).

	Pacitalian banks (20 largest, sorted by assets)
Banco di Mandragora | BNP Paribas | Pacibank | ABN Amro | Elementa | Conepassanto Banco di Sambuca | Bacenepano | Capitalia | BSC-Lock | Unione Citizenura | BNL | Bepida | BCM-Axis | Maparma | NSBP | BCC | Banco Mercantilo | BPax | Coperativanta | Pinkbank