Rolling Stock Stars

This is an 18xx-ish game with share trading but no map or track
laying.

Players buy companies; a company is a bit like a private, one entity
owns all of it. Companies can grow up into corporations; corporations
are share traded and buy companies from players or each other.

A company has between 1 and 5 stars. They come out in order of number
of stars - first the 1s, then the 2s, etc., and higher-star companies
have more income. Companies have a fixed income by themselves, but can
have "synergy" with other companies owned by the same corporation
which improves their income. They also have a nominal face value which
does not change.

The 8 corporations have a special ability each and different numbers
of shares, they're not all 10-share companies. The Director's
certificate is a single share, not a double.

The deck of share price cards means no two companies can ever have the
same share price. Playing IRL, each company would actually hold the
card for its current share price. If your share price is going up or
down and the card you want isn't in the deck, you keep going until you
find a card that is, meaning your share price changes by more.

The "foreign investor" serves to keep the game moving by automatically
buying up the deck of companies, similar to the way the game pushes
the trains in many 18xx titles.

Investment (and Wrap-Up)

Effectively a share round. You can pass, auction a company, or trade
shares in corporations. Priority deal goes by leftover money. After a
share round, the foreign investor buys all the companies it can,
starting with the lowest priced one.

However, a big gotcha is that you can't buy Treasury shares. A
corporation has to decide to issue shares to make them available in
the market.

When you buy a share, the price goes up (and you pay the new higher
price); when you sell one, it goes down. You can steal Directorships
in the usual way. There's no obligation to have a Director and a
receivership mechanism for corporations that don't.

Acquisition

Corporations can buy companies from other entities. Each company has a
permissible price range printed on it. There's no order of play and I
think cross-trading between players is commonplace. A given company or
unit of money can't be traded more than once in this phase.

The foreign investor sells companies only at the highest permitted
price. If more than one corporation wants to buy the same company from
the investor, the corporation with the highest share price gets it.

Closing

You can close companies you or any of your corporations own. You might
do this because the cost of ownership mechanism has made them not turn
a profit. The foreign investor will close any company they own with a
negative income.

Income

Players, corporations, and the foreign investor collect income. The
investor has a base income of 5. When companies have a cost of
ownership, it is deducted.

Companies that belong to corporations can have "synergies". Each
company has the name of some other companies printed on it, and an
additional amount of income for owning that pair.

A corporation's revenue goes straight into its Treasury. There's no
direct relationship between the amount of revenue and the amount to be
paid in dividends.

Dividends

You pay dividends only to issued shares (ie, all shares not in the
Treasury). Your share price card lists a maximum dividend per share;
pick a number between that and 0.

You then count up the total stars of your companies and add 1 star for
each 10 you paid out in dividends. Your share price card lists a
target number of stars based on the number of issued shares. If you
have more or fewer stars than this, your share price goes up or down
by up to two spaces.

(How does this work in practice? Dunno.)

End Card

If there are no companies for auction, the cost of ownership increases
from 7 to 10. If it is already 10, the game ends.

Issue Shares

You can only issue one share, effectively selling it to the bank. You
lose a spot of share price by doing so.

IPO

You can convert one of your companies into a corporation. You pick a
charter card (affecting the share count and giving a special ability),
choose a suitable starting price (the par price varies with number of
shares), take the Director's share, and pay the difference between the
par price and the face value of the company. The bank then buys one
share.

The corporation now owns one company. There's nothing special about
this starting company - it could be sold or closed later - but the
corporation must always own at least one company.

If the face value was more than the par price, you buy two shares and
pay the excess, and the bank buys two shares.

Game End

The game ends immediately if a share price reaches 75 during
Acquisition, if a share price is 75 during End Card, or if the cost of
ownership is 10 already when hitting the End Card phase.

Final score is based on cash, face value of your own companies, and
stock value. As normal, company assets don't count.