Big companies often use their leverage to take stakes in would-be suppliers, especially in the technology business.
Would-be drug companies must either produce medicines that stand up to federal scrutiny, demonstrate that their data has value to other companies, or go out of business.
Companies buy customers when they cannot win new business on their own. They merge when their executives do not have a better idea of what to do.
Rising interest rates are considered bad for stocks because they raise the cost of doing business and depress corporate earnings and because higher yields make bonds relatively more attractive than stocks to investors.
Business cycles lengthened greatly during the 20th century, as central banks learned to manage national economies by raising and lowering interest rates.
It is a truth universally acknowledged on Wall Street that original research is on life support. Serious research can be bad for business, as well as expensive.