Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw was one of several duke-level 
Equity Lords who had come out of Apthorp. Apthorp was not a formal organization 
that could be looked up in a phone book; in financial cant, it referred to a 
strategic alliance of several immense companies, including Machine-Phase 
Systems Limited and Imperial Tectonics Limited. When no one important was 
listening, its employees called it John Zaibatsu, much as their forebears of a 
previous century had referred to the East India Company as John Company.