CHOAM



The Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles (CHOAM) is a fictional universal development corporation in Frank Herbert's Dune universe, first mentioned in the 1965 novel Dune. Essentially, it controls all economic affairs across the cosmos, although it relies upon the Spacing Guild for transport across space due to the Guild's monopoly on interstellar travel.

The corporation's management and board of directors are controlled by the Padishah Emperor and the Landsraad (with the Spacing Guild and the Bene Gesserit as silent partners). Because of its control of inter-planetary commerce, CHOAM is the largest single source of wealth in the Old Empire; as such, influence in CHOAM (through partisans within it and control of directorships) is the central goal of political maneuvering, both to receive dividends and also (it is implied) to skim off profits. In Dune, Herbert notes:

Before the climactic battle in Dune, Paul Muad'Dib's Fremen watch the Padishah Emperor's encampment to see whether he would raise the Atreides flag, indicating a recognition of Paul's claims, or the banner of Paul's Harkonnen enemies. Instead, the Emperor raises the flag of CHOAM, as a reminder to all of the combatant parties that economics trump political considerations.