Pretoria Qualified
Corporation Slogan: Best of a Kind.
CEO Name & Age: Johannes van der Sandt III, Aged 104.
Headquarters: Pretoria, South Africa.
Major Industries: Finances.
Minor Industries: Cyber Security & Genetic Engineering.
Starting Trait: Private Wealth; Company starts as a Closed Corporation and with +1d50 Billions.
Brief History & DescriptionOriginally a personal accounting firm catering to the wealthy Boer elite of Apartheid-era South Africa, Pretoria Qualified (then known as 'Pretoria Qualified Accountants') managed to grow into something grander through taking cunning advantage of the social changes that rocked that nation in its last dying years. Its corporate policy controlled by its sole owner, Johannes van der Sandt (grandfather of the current CEO), PQ was able to turn on a dime and offer its wholehearted support to the desegregation movement once its victory in the country had become certain. The company began rejecting business with pro-apartheid clients and replaced them with the party elites of the African National Congress, following the trail of money and power to South Africa's new ruling class. PQ's enrichment allowed them to entrench themselves in all aspects of the financial sector, branching out from accounting into banking and insurance services. The changing arrangements of South African politics proved especially beneficial when many of PQ's competitors chose not to follow Pretoria Qualified's lead, opting instead to relocate themselves out of country.
They would not be able to enjoy respite from the Van der Sandt family for long, however. Not content with dominance of the finance industry in lowly South Africa, PQ quickly spread its influence across the globe, riding a tide of globalization to acquire themselves offices and clients in Europe, America, and even East Asia. The rapid pace of technological progress of the era helped facilitate this growth, as online banking and the rise of cryptocurrencies permitted PQ to offer its menagerie of financial services to clients across the entire globe. Throughout it all, though, the PQ would keep its focus placed squarely on a single demographic: the rich. International citizens with money to spare became Pretoria Qualified's bread and butter, and the billions they gleefully added to the PQ's coffers allowed the company to invest itself in world-class, in-house cybersecurity, further endearing itself to its mega-rich—and therefore paranoid and anxious—clientele.
The company's third CEO, also named Johannes van der Sandt, has led the company for some decades now. The patriarch of the PQ's founding and still majority-owning family, the latest Van der Sandt has bent the PQ to his whims of accommodating a particular interest of his, in an industry previously outside of the PQ's area of expertise: genetic engineering. Wishing himself never to die, the centenarian CEO has thus far had numerous organ transplants and biotechnical and cybernetic additions to his failing body, but firmly believes the true secret of immortality to be in genetic engineering. He has sought out and hired a vast array of the world's best genetic engineers to busy themselves finding a way to make their wheelchair-bound, multi-trillionaire employer never have to let go of his plethora of dollars.
