Fewer larger firms now dominate US stock exchanges via mergers

Evidence

While ownership of corporate equities is increasingly dominated by the few and the powerful, the corporations themselves are increasingly dominated by a few companies in each sector as well, using their market power to prevent competition. In figure 2.5, we see the overall decline in the number of firms listed on U.S. stock exchanges, with an inverse relationship to the market valuation of the companies remaining, which continues to climb steadily. In other words, the overall trend is toward fewer, more powerful, and more profitable companies. In figure 2.6, we see one of the key strategies that companies pursue to reach that scale: mergers and acquisitions, which have skyrocketed to over fifty thousand deals annually across the globe, reaching $5 trillion in value. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 104

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the megamerger/private-consolidation literature like Wu’s The Curse of Bigness; central to tracing rollups’ cultural fingerprints.