Blacktown Exchange Company

Part of the state series of articles.

Read more: Sovereign Areas, Finance in the Commonwealth, Handshake Accounting

The Blacktown Exchange Company (BXC, or simply Blacktown) is a chartered company that runs the Blacktown Factory on Grand Caimana, in the Caimanas. It is also a financial adviser and arranger of sovereign debt and complex financial products in the Commonwealth, and is strongly associated with the Social Working Group, which it is often said to bank for. It is a private company, although the Commonwealth Sovereign Wealth Corporation, a constituent of the Commonwealth Securities Exchange, holds a stake in it.

Since the domestic economy has no money, foreign trade that is not conducted by the state is conducted in factories, which are trading posts where foreign merchants live and trade in money. Blacktown is the second largest factory in the country after the Dohyo Free Port in Oslola, and unlike most others it is not a single port or market but a whole quarter of the town, with its own wharves, warehouses and counting houses. The company holds it under a charter of the Bureau of the Frontier, whose factor is the senior federal officer there. A lot of foreign banks and trading houses have offices in the factory, and the company’s financial business grew out of the exchange it runs for them. The Caimanas are also a regional banking capital, and the Commonwealth Ratings Corporation is headquartered nearby.

Because the Commonwealth cannot reinvest its surplus at home, it lends a large share of it overseas under Handshake Accounting, and it holds the world’s second-largest foreign currency reserves. As such, the state is a creditor to a lot of foreign governments, many of them in Africa and the developing world. The company arranges much of this lending, and also advises foreign treasuries and central banks on the bonds, loans and currency arrangements they hold with Commonwealth institutions. Its business includes:

• Administration of the Blacktown factory, its exchange and its wharves
• Arranging the placement of foreign government bonds with the sovereign fund and the Commonwealth Bank
• Advice to foreign treasuries on refinancing, mostly in the Atlantic and Africa
• Currency swaps and credit lines in the Government Crown (✾AK)
• Positions of its own in foreign government debt and credit derivatives, traded on the CSX Bond and Derivatives Markets

Its dealings with foreign governments are often thought to follow the interests of the Social Working Group. The New York Times implicated Blacktown and its subsidiaries in holding discrete positions within allies of the apartheid governments of Southern Africa ( South Africa, Rhodesia and Livre Portugal Mozambique). It was shown to reroute commodities against its own financial interests during pressure campaigns against these countries, implicating it with other levers of espionage in the Social Working Group. Because of its substantial position in international commodities, the company has been accused of weaponising its influence over importers as form of political lending.

The company was chartered in 2038 to run the factory, after the breakdown of Commonwealth capital controls in the mid-2030s, and took up the arrangement of sovereign lending soon after. Its association with the Social Working Group is generally dated to the 2040s and the emergence of the Apartheid Ring. The senior posts of the company are mostly filled from the Treasury and the Commonwealth Bank. The company’s board is appointed by its shareholders, but its larger positions are generally understood to be approved by the Ministry of Commerce. Because it is a factory company, its accounts are not certified by the Commonwealth Accounts Service like those of government, and not much is known about its affairs. Despite this, it is well-regarded in international markets for its advice, and some of the governments that have accused it are still its clients.