Conglomerate Merger

A lot of people who get married have nothing in common. The same goes for mergers between companies.

Conglomerate mergers typically involve companies whose business activities are very different. Pure conglomerate mergers are between companies with different customer bases, operations, and products or services. Mixed conglomerate mergers may have little in common, but they're looking for ways to work together to enter new markets or create relatable products.

These mergers aren't always a good thing. One of the most recognized conglomerate mergers happened between the ABC network and the Walt Disney Company. That just ended up making ABC television shows very “family friendly,” and Disney characters started wandering around in the background of ESPN broadcasts, and made the channel hard to watch with its constant co-branding of Action Hero movies in SportsCenter segments.

If this term were used in a sentence at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the judge would read: “The conglomerate merger between ABC and Disney has been a scourge on society.”