NORSE

Structure

Nonboris Outsystem Resource Syndication Enterprises (NORSE) is a legal trading name and legal entity used by the Nonboris family holdings for apex-level contracts and representations. While often described as a legal front, corporate lawyers from NORSE have patiently explained to the courts of many jurisdictions that NORSE is a form of quasi-megacorporation that acts as a legal interface for what is in fact a traditional Vikinger-style decentralised network of syndicates and syndicates of syndicates. Syndicate rights are largely owned by Nonboris family members, but with a significant minority of non-family syndicate members. At the normal scale of operation individual syndicates contract for trade in their own right (often with 'downstream' networks of freelancers and independents). It is only for the very largest-scale operations (or litigation) that NORSE becomes the contracting legal party. In recent times this is best exemplified by the very large scale contracts reached with various Quadrant 7 governments - MAFC and non-MAFC - for reconstruction projects following in the wake of grievous impact of the Exterminator War on Q7.
At an earlier phase of the legal history of NORSE, the O stood for Oxygen, owing to the origins of the Nonboris family business in the extraction and trading of oxygen and related primary resources from belts and small planetoids (see Oxygen Farming). As the syndicates diversified into other areas - industrial production, energy, shipping, even the manufacture of low cost retail goods - the name was changed to reflect the changing activities.

Headquarters

In recognition of the increasing importance of government contracts, NORSE has recently relocated its headquarters from the traditional Nonboris family steading-planetoid at THOR POINT, a Lagrange point in the outer belt of the Vikinger system HELM, to a brand new headquarters building at Xynam the Quadrant capital. NORSE also operates smaller offices at almost all of the Q7 homeworlds (wherever it is not completely unwelcome) and a significant presence at Crater City, New Mars.

Shipping Activities

Reflecting a long term financial strategy of vertical integration, a considerable amount of commercial and industrial shipping for the various syndicates is registered under the NORSE commercial flag. Given the out of the way routes which NORSE commercial vessels tend to operate in, they are typically armed to reasonable self defence levels. In normal times this flag is a mere formality (and/or tax dodge), but in times of crisis NORSE-flagged vessels have traditionally been organised as logistics auxilliaries to support the MSN, or, for humanitarian operations, other navies and polities. For example NORSE-flagged vessels were involved in evacuation and emergency humanitarian relief supply operations to Martian and non-Martian worlds in Q7 during the Exterminator Wars, as well as assisting MSN naval logistics in the STUFT role. Commercial relationships forged with various local system governments during these operations are being expanded into what are described by NORSE public relations staff as "mutually beneficial projects and arrangements".

Organisation

The current President and CEO of NORSE is Flavia Pontefract Nonboris, who is also the Co-Chief Convenor of the Grand Syndicates of Thor Point (thus de facto head of the Nonboris clan). Flavia is also great-aunt to the recently elected Q7 MAFC Federal Senator (MCGP) Augustus Humberdink Nonboris.