That is the nature of business cycle. Everyone starts of doing their own thing. Then at a point in time businesses start to run out of markets to keep growing.

That is the nature of business cycle. Everyone starts of doing their own thing. Then at a point in time businesses start to run out of markets to keep growing. They need to find new places to generate alpha. This mostly coincides with the rise of easy credit. Some businesses are more ambitious than others. So the ambitious business takes out loans(credit) to buy other businesses at a significant cost. The idea being that consolidations will lead to synergies, save costs and market dominance. And this is what is happening right now in almost every sector. You can take any industry and you will find that there are more and more consolidations happening right now.