great moment It was in mis connection that Saudir had reason to feel himself most fortunate m the abilities of his finance minister for it was he who devised the distribution of shares which with minor revisions, became die foundation of the corporation Perhaps the master stroke m this arrangement was assigning the emper or only 20% of the shares In granting the emperor only one fifth of the shares of CHOAM, he placed the Imperial House m a position where it would have to depend on many other of the feudal powers if it were to control the corporation It was also clear to all mat this percentage was far less man the emperor had every right to His military pow er was the equal of die combined forces of the Landsraad in some respects particularly atomics and the benefits which flowed to him from levy funds and other taxes made him an economic power more than equal to half of the Landsraad s states All corporations need directors and CHOAM was no exception Originally they were the members of the Landsraad High Council After the first few decades of operation however the composition of the board was changed to reflect the distribution of economic power among the Great Houses Sometime toward the end of the first century after the Guild monopoly membership on the board of directors of CHOAM was offered to any house which did more than 500 mil lion solan s worth of trade through the Guild in a Standard year Directors naturally voted their own shares in the meetings of the board and also those of an> house that wished to grant them a proxy (It is worth noting that one of the reasons the Emperor and the Harkonnens moved so quickly after the Atreides took over Arrakis was their fears concerning the CHOAM board Leto s popularity would probably have shifted the balance of power on the board since he had become a member due to the wealth of the spice trade of Arrakis ) The plan seemed more than fair with re spect to the participation of the emperor Moreover it also had the great advantage of cementing the power of the feudal powers vis-d vis the remaining non feudal states in the empire In closing intersystem and inter stellar trade to non feudal states the emper or offered an unequaled opportunity to the feudal powers to remove their most persis tent worry Not only did such an agreement offer the chance of restriction of these gov emments to their own worlds it also as the emperor s plan was organized strengthened the very states that were most threatened by nonfeudal powers The weakest feudal states were generally those that were closest geo graphically to non feudal governments those that had to compete on an almost daily basis with differing societies But brilliant as the structure of the propos al was it would have failed if the partici pants had not been able to convince them selves that their shares in the corporation were fair The shares were based on their CHOAM 163 trade without their systems over the past ten years Such a shari