The Bank of the Red

## The Bank of the Red River

* **Rating:**CC
* **Headquarters:**The Red Bank Pylon, The Block 2-1, Sublevel One, Floors One through Four and Six through Eleven, Fargo  RRDMZ  58124
* **President:**Marie LaClerc
* **Partnerships:**The Bank of the Red is a member of the  Red River Valley Investment, Holdings and Development Group, as well as being the official financial institution of the Group, with a monopoly on major financial functions with Group member businesses. BotR maintains close relations with partner banks UCABank in the UCAS  and the Lakotah Mazaska Oti (Sioux National Bank) in the Oceti Sakowin . It also has cultivated a partnership with its overseas counterpart in the Banque Nationale d'Europe , one of the components of which, BNP Paribas, formerly owned the institution now known as the Bank of the Red.
* **Description:**A dedicated financial and deposit bank serving the Red River Disputed Military Zone. Its assets are guaranteed by both the UCAS and Oceti Sakowin governments by the terms of the Alexandria Accords (Appendix Five, Paragraph Eighteen).

Dating back to 1929 as First Bank, the institution now called Bank of the Red, like most banks, has seen a lot of different names on its front door as mergers and breakups ebbed and flowed through the financial world. First Bank split in 1984 into First Bank (which itself acquired USBancorp and then took on the name) and Community First, based out of Fargo, serving about a dozen states. In 2004 Community First was acquired by Bank of the West (itself already a subsidiary of French banking giant BNP Paribas), which it remained until the 2020's when BNP Paribas sold it to the Toronto-based BMO (Bank of Montreal), formally taking on the name in 2023. Having survived crisis at home and the breakup of the old United States, BMO now faced the challenge of reunification. With Montreal joining the newly-formed Republique de Quebec, BMO was broken into its UCAS and Quebec halves by strict Quebecois banking regulations and the UCAS portion (the largest part of the bank) was under attack by a (eventually successful) takeover bid from up-and-coming player Ares Macrotechnology, right after it had bought-out USBancorp. The complicated set of corporate buyouts and lawsuits and countersuits that went into this included the break-up and selling off of much of the former Bank of the West. The Fargo location was shifted off into its own minor holding company, rebranded 'Red River Financial Services Corporation' and entered into a complicated partnership with the nascent Group largely as a play to further obfuscate its ownership and make it harder for Ares to acquire.

Although it started out as a desperate move by a threatened corporation, the Bank of the Red has gone from strength to strength, managing to play the various disasters that have struck the Red River Valley to its advantage, culminating in the Red River Crisis of '64 where its leading role in the Alexandria Accords allowed it to acquire RBC Commonwealth Bank in Winnipeg  which made it the pre-eminent financial and banking institution in the Red River Valley, a position it maintains to this day.

Of note, the Red Bank Pylon (formerly the Community First Building and Bank of the West Tower), which forms part of the southern edge of the Block, was built in 1974 on the site of the Grand Temple of the Shiloh Lodge #1 of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons (which had been torn down in 1968) and to this day Hermetic mages (especially of the masonic or Rosicrucian leanings) claim the site as a minor point of nexus. It is, to be sure, the only place in the Block where magic can be reliably cast outside of the Block's top-notch astral security. Taking advantage of this, the local masonic initiatory group, the Masonic Temple of the Western Bank , keeps their headquarters here, renting the fifth floor from the Bank of the Red.

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