Financial Plaza

The Financial Plaza is one of several beating hearts in the sprawling metropolis of Utopia. Here can be found the major financial giants of the planet and its various regions and districts. It is also interesting to note that the Utopia Metro Police Department HQ is a short distance away as is City Hall.

Local's call the place "Moneybag Central", it is where all the cash flows in and out at a steady pace most of the time, a trickle rarely and a frantic rush on very rare occasions. It is an area of bright shiny buildings, neatly groomed apparatchiks or kaisha-in moving to and fro in their business attire. You can identify the firms or departments by lapel pins, clothes wise they all look very similar.

And here and there you can spot a Financial Plaza Security (FPSEC) team, dressed all in black, with visored helmets and tooled up for bear as they say. FPSEC is a rather grey agency, it insures order and security within the Plaza and has no authority outside. Yet no one knows who it specifically answers to or how the organisation itself is funded. Also Utopia's own police have no jurisdiction in the Plaza, its totally FPSECs playground.

Which is another nickname used by locals for this area. Rumour has it any homeless or vagrant who tries to find shelter in the parking spaces or sidestreets is taken in by FPSEC. The in the early dawn hours they're released and chased by punishment drones, if the perp can escape before the drones zap them they're allowed to go free. If they don't well they get contstantly zapped until death. So local rumour claims.

There is also another similar rumour that under one of the office complexes there is a secret underground blood sport venue. It is also dubbed 'The Playground' and is where kaisha-in and apparatchiks go to let off steam after a hard day's slog at the office. Some claim the operators of this establishment have connections to another similar facility known as Club Thracian in Krasnygorod.

Despite the various dark rumours about the 'locals' proclivities the Plaza is in essence the beating financial heart of not only Utopia but the settlement of Lazarus as a whole. The following institutes and firms are located here:

• Credit Mondial
• Unibanco SA
• Krasnygorod Narodny Bank (KNB)
• First Bank of Monolith City (FBMC)
• UN Colonial Development Bank (UNCDB)
• Industry & Commercial Bank (ICB)
• Grand Canal Credit Union (GCCU)
• Wells Fargo & Morgan
• Sino African Commerce Bank (SACB)
• Oceania Commercial Bank (OCB)

UNPALAZ oversees the operations of the Financial Plaza, the authority's chief financial officer (CFO), Charles Franklin MacArthur, is a frequent guest of various CEOs and board members of the major institutions. He also has a penthouse office/suite in the UN Colonial Development Bank offices from which he liaises with various individuals and vested interests.