Auric Enterprises

Auric Enterprises, or Entreprises Auric A.G., or simply AE, is a Swiss metallurgical and engineering company owned by billionaire Auric Goldfinger. The company is the main antagonistic faction in the 1959 James Bond novel Goldfinger and its 1964 cinematographic adaptation. It later made a subsequent apparence in the 2012 Activision's video game 007 Legends as a part of a re-imagined Goldfinger storyline.

History[]

Goldfinger (novel)[]

Entreprises Auric A.G. is an engineering business based in Coppet in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. Owned by Auric Goldfinger, they manufacture metal furniture for the Swiss railways and airlines such as Mecca (also owned by Goldfinger), a major charter line to India.

Entreprises Auric plays a major part in Goldfinger's gold smuggling scheme, taking the gold components of Auric's armour-plated Silver Ghost and melting them down to be modeled into chairs for Mecca aircraft. Once arriving in India, the chairs are stripped off the plane, melted down once again into gold bars and are replaced with aluminium ones, whilst the bars are sold for a much higher premium rate; netting Goldfinger close to a million pounds in profit.

Goldfinger (film)[]

Auric Goldfinger founded the company in Switzerland to engage in legitimate bullion and jewelry dealing. Unknown to the public, the enterprise is known to illegally smuggle gold throughout all of Europe, recently through Goldfinger's Rolls-Royce Phantom III vehicle, which was witnessed by James Bond.

Following Bond's capture and transport to Kentucky, Bond soon learns of Goldfinger's plot: he plans to destroy Fort Knox and supply of gold with a Atomic Bomb (created by Mr. Ling). As such, Goldfinger would have to have his aviator team called the Flying Circus (led by Pussy Galore) to spray Nerve Gas across the area that will kill 60,000 troops so that he can lead his task force (led by Oddjob and Kisch) to transport the bomb into the vault. Once the bomb is set to go off, it will destroy Fort Knox and render the gold radioactive and useless for 58 years, thus putting the U.S. economoy in chaos and allowing the value of Auric Enterprises' gold to increase many times, thus making it the most richest company in the world.

To that end, Goldfinger gets several crime bosses (Mr. Solo, Jed Midnight and Jack Strap) to smuggle the gas and weaponry to the company as part of his plan before having them all killed to cover his tracks. Not wanting this to happen, Bond seduces Galore, convincing her to get the Flying Circus to replace the gas with a more harmless subtance while alerting the U.S. government about the plot. This allowed the U.S. Army to take down all of Goldfinger's men, including Oddjob, Kisch and Mr. Ling. Goldfinger would later meet his end after being sucked out from a plane to his death after a brief fight against Bond, and it's implied that Auric Enterprises would be shut down afterwards.

007 Legends[]

Auric Enterprises returns in the first mission of the 2012 video game 007 Legends as part of a re-imagined story based on 1964's Goldfinger. After starting an investigation into Auric Goldfinger, who MI6 believe is smuggling gold out of the United Kingdom, 007 is dispatched to infiltrate his headquarters at Auric Enterprises in Switzerland.

References[]