Atomic-Black asked: In your mind, how is Wayne Industries structured?
wow this took like six months and ended up a lot longer than i intended and i'm not even sure if i answered the question you were asking
i am ignoring literally everything from canon because canon says that every single company owned by wayne enterprises is called Wayne Insert-Industry-Name-Here and that's dumb as all hell and i hate it. also i made the company founding contemporary with famous olde rich people like the rockefellers and whatnot because Old Money. i'll put dates on some of these but on some of them (like when we're getting real granular) i just cannot be fucked to bother. let's also agree that there are a bunch of things that are technically subsidiaries but which are actually the exact same goddamn thing just slightly altered because it's in a different state or something, which i don't need to list.
i am assuming for these purposes that wayne enterprises is a privately held conglomerate with control having been ceded to a board of directors during thomas wayne's tenure as ceo-in-name-mostly as well as while the company was in a trust; the board was subsequently dissolved once bruce was old enough to make that decision. privately held companies aren't obligated to disclose financials or maintain a board, which is great if you're planning to be batman and also make a lot of theoretically financially unwise decisions like setting a minimum wage of $15 throughout the organization and implementing a cash profit sharing plan.
anti-trust and monopoly laws aren't an issue because they're way too diversified and none of their business units dominate their chosen industry. there are probably conspiracy theories that the reason for the immense diversity of interests is actually to keep different markets competitive and protect other businesses from anti-trust suits, which would be pretty compelling if every wayne from the start weren't fueled by spite and pettiness.
anyone who wants to has blanket permission to use this for whatever because canon is for suckers but so is figuring out corporate structures yourself
Technically speaking Wayne Capital was Wayne Enterprises before they diversified but I didn't want to clutter up the big header so here we are. Ostensibly started as an investment firm, actually started as a ponzi scheme that went sideways and turned into a legitimate business. There was a war going on, things were confusing, people were dying or else just skipping town because it seemed like a good time for that kind of thing. Next thing you know you've got a lot of extra cash and you're actually making a decent amount of interest on that small loan you made to that guy with the boat. One thing leads to another and now you're a shipping tycoon who also owns some banks. These things happen.
Wayne Capital Bank (1865)
Coinsure (2006)
Arkenity Financial (1947)
Coine Realty (merger 1982)
Wakewater Insurance Services (1885)
No one wants to insure my boats? Fuck this, I'll insure my own goddamn boats, is what I'll do. Does anyone else want in on this? Okay, cool.
Property and other insurances through Wakewater are some of the only policies to fully cover acts of supervillainy and/or heroism.
This division bleeds cash under Bruce but who cares.
Wakewater Life Insurance Company (1885)
Wakewater Health (1983)
Wakewater Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (1931)
Wakewater Home and Renters Insurance Company (1908)
When they were planning to change the name of this division, Thomas Wayne lobbied for Waynergy, and would have given up fairly quickly if someone had not pointed out that this sounded too much like Weinergy. Thomas insisted on referring to this branch of the company as 'Weinergy' for the remainder of his life, and no one could stop him, because he owned it. Imagine working your whole life to become one of the top energy researchers in the world just to have the guy who owns your whole company, a philanthropic brain surgeon, introduce you as 'one of the Weiner Boys from over at Weinergy'.
Nor'easter Co (merger 2009)
Gotham Solar (1987)
Great Lakes HydroElectric (1904)
Galactomics (1954)
Galactomics Lifestyle (2004)
They were the Wayne Rail Company, and then the Gotham Rail Company, and then Gotham Land and Sea, then GLS which they pretended didn't stand for anything or possibly stood for a variety of charming slogans, then they merged with about three different aviation companies to swallow them into their aviation division and the combined name they came up with was GaleTek. Welcome to corporate naming conventions, it's a goddamn nightmare.
Hart Aviation (1927)
Gotham Rail Company (1871)
Superior Freighters Inc. (1874)
Wayne Motors (1914)
Patrick Wayne bought a broadcasting company just so they'd stop talking about Watergate. He was a big Nixon fan. The networks have gotten better since then. Thomas Wayne set a lot of strict advertising guidelines that continue to this day. It's become an umbrella for Wayne Enterprise's entire entertainment division, which is a bitch to map out because entertainment companies are structural nightmares. I did this to myself but I'm still mad about it.
Birch & White Publications (acquired 1953)
GCBN (1931)
GCBN News
TheGackbin.com
GCBN Sports
GCBN Radio (1931)
The original and still the champion
GothamRadio.com (2003)
Gotham Television Company (1986)
This is all the cable channels. There's a lot of them.
Clue TV (1986)
FunnyBones (1986)
Civil History (2003)
Curiousities (1989)
Bubbly (1986)
Rolling Stone (1992)
Vaudevision (founded 1914, acquired 2003)
Pretty comparable to RKO except it lived. You can probably guess their schtick.
Vaudevision Animation (1941)
VVA Classics (2001)
Vaudevision Home Network (1983)
Vodevista (1995)
Kale Studios (2017)
I'm starting to lose steam, here. Figuring out GCBN was exhausting. Why did I do this to myself. Anyway Wayne Enterprises owns some hotels because reasons.
Red Oak Hotels (1936)
Lakeshore Motel (1962)
Amberview Hotels (acquired 2005)
Midrange hotels, extraordinarily generic.
Bruce bought these just to put another layer of separation between himself and the inns he wanted to open because the Lakeshore Motels were too skeevy.
Amberview Inn (2006)
Grand Lighthouse Resort (1906, acquired 1940)
So many supervillains used to work under the Wayne Health umbrella. Mostly because when people do evil shit they get fired. It's not supervillainy if you're gainfully employed doing it. If you're unemployed and experimenting on animal brains, you have a problem.
Wayne Health (1908)
Wayne Care Network (1966)
Patrick bought some hospitals. I don't know why. Why does anyone do anything? Why am I doing this? The world is filled with mysteries. They probably own a lot of hospitals and clinics that I don't feel like exploring.
Gotham Central Hospital System (1966)
St. Rita's Hospital (1984)
ChemiCare (1975)
Asclepius Digital (2006)
Owning a department store: all the cool tycoons are doing it. Right? Right. Started as Wayne Co, eventually diversified and Wayne Co became a subsidiary of a larger company.
Wayne Co. (1898)
Gotham Department Store (1916)
Green Market (1995)
This name seemed like a good idea in the 60s. I was going to list all the things here but have you ever looked at what Nestle owns? Or Unilever? You think I'm making a list like that? No. Fuck that. They probably used to own a lot more companies and then got rid of a bunch of them because they sucked.
Space Cakes (1962)
Havermann Dairy (acquired 1967)
Alberici Meats (acquired 1974)
Tucker's Old-Fashioned Soda (acquired 2015)
Saraniti Pickles (acquired 2017)
I have put off finishing this for like two months because I was so deeply disinterested in figuring out the technology subsidiary, but now I'm putting off finishing something else so here we are. Originally the Gotham Radio Company, now it's just GRC because video killed the radio star and also they mostly make weird shit that isn't radios. In close competition with Wayne Health to see whose former employees are most likely to become supervillains.
GRC (1924)
Maelstromatic (1929)
GRC Labs (1938)
Computronic Machines (1965)
It was the sixties and everyone was making computers.
The Computronic Program-o-Mat was deeply unpopular despite having what was clearly a better name than any other home computer ever made.
Nerds these days lust after original Program-o-Mat cases to put new computers inside them and then make them run Doom.
They make decent consumer tech now. Desktops, laptops, phones. Boring stuff.
Computronic Machine Programs (1972)
Telelectroscope (2003)
... i can't think of anything else to add to this list. am i... am i done? am i free?