Consolidation Phase
Categories: Company Management, Financial Theory
The consolidation phase is a moment in the history of an industry where companies begin to merge in order to form larger organizations. Like the law coming to the Old West boom town.
Think about the early days of the oil industry. At first, there were a lot of wildcatters and single-man operations (we're talking in the mid-19th century here). A bunch of small concerns operating in a mostly disorganized market. Then guys like John Rockefeller came along. They started to buy everyone else out. Eventually, the list of producers got whittled down to a few large, international corporations that controlled the vast majority of the oil market.
That John Rockefeller time was the consolidation phase.