Conglomerate

Conglomerate, in business, a corporation consisting of several unrelated firms whose merger increases and diversifies company assets. Such a merger reduces a company's dependence on a single product or service in the marketplace. Many conglomerate mergers took place in the 1960s and 1970s in the belief that important economies of scale or synergies could be realized. By the 1980s the tide of opinion had turned and many conglomerates split off many of their businesses and concentrated on a particular core activity. This process was encouraged in some countries—such as Great Britain and the United States—by the growth of leveraged buyouts (LBOs) which were particularly targeted at conglomerates.