A large corporation composed of multiple, often unrelated businesses or subsidiaries operating under a single corporate structure. In historical context, conglomerates emerged as a dominant business model in the mid-20th century.
From Latin 'conglomeratus,' meaning 'rolled together' or 'gathered into a ball,' originally used in geology to describe rocks formed from fragments. The business meaning developed in the 1960s to describe companies that acquired diverse, unrelated businesses.
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