Every deal, every compounder, one filterable reference set.
The Baratelli Institute maintains the open web’s most complete free-to-read acquisition-record collection for the world’s most-studied compounders. Eleven pages currently document the corpus — Berkshire Hathaway, LVMH, Danaher, AB InBev, Constellation Software, Carlos Slim, Prosus / Naspers, Reliance Industries, SoftBank, Nestle, and JAB Holding — catalogued transaction by transaction, sortable and filterable at practitioner grade. Each page is a living document, updated when new deals close and re-indexed as new archetypes emerge. More records are queued behind the current eleven, added as practitioner queries surface them. The Institute’s editorial thesis is that acquisition-driven compounding is a category — not eleven unrelated stories — and that the reference layer, published free, earns the reader trust that carries downstream into the paid work.
The collection catalogues every material acquisition made by Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett, 1965–today, US industrial earnings-power roll-up), LVMH (Bernard Arnault, 1984–today, French luxury maison assembly), Danaher (Steven and Mitchell Rales, 1984–today, US healthcare-industrial operating-system integration), AB InBev (3G Capital, 1989–today, brewing roll-up with zero-based budgeting), Constellation Software (Mark Leonard, 1995–today, Canadian vertical-market software permanent-hold), Carlos Slim (1981–today, Mexican family conglomerate), Prosus / Naspers (Koos Bekker to Bob van Dijk, 1915–today, Dutch/South African emerging-market tech investor), Reliance Industries (Dhirubhai to Mukesh Ambani, 1966–today, Indian conglomerate from petrochemicals to Jio), SoftBank (Masayoshi Son, 1981–today, Japanese tech-investor concentrated bets), Nestle (Henri Nestle to Laurent Freixe, 1866–today, Swiss consumer brand roll-up), and JAB Holding (Reimann family via Peter Harf, 2012–today, German-Belgian permanent capital across coffee, QSR, and pet care). Archetypes covered: industrial compounder, luxury / consumer, roll-up and family conglomerate, technology investor — four categories of acquisition-driven compounding, eleven reference records, one hub.
The reference layer is the trust layer. The paid work follows.
Comprehensive, sortable, dated acquisition records for the world’s most-studied compounders are inexplicably absent from the open web. Bloomberg covers pieces behind a terminal fee. The Wall Street Journal covers individual deals as they close. Wikipedia carries partial lists at inconsistent depth. But no single publisher maintains a living reference set at practitioner grade — no one page, per compounder, that a practitioner can sort by decade, filter by counterparty type, isolate to whole-company deals versus stakes, and trust as fact-checkable to a public source on every row.
The Baratelli Institute publishes this collection free because the reference layer earns the reader trust that converts into guide sales downstream.
Every record in the collection is a living document. When Berkshire closes another deal, the row is added and the sitemap timestamp bumps. When a new archetype emerges — a European industrial conglomerate, an Asian family-controlled compounder, a next-generation software roll-up — a new record is queued and shipped. The rule is simple: practitioner queries drive the roadmap. When enough working analysts and family-office CFOs and M&A operators arrive on the site searching for a specific compounder’s deal history, the Institute adds the record. Every entry, every page, is intended to stand up to a boardroom’s scrutiny.
Each card opens the underlying record — a sortable, filterable table of every transaction, source-cited and updated as new deals close.
The reference case for earnings-power roll-up. Six decades of whole-company purchases from friendly founders — National Indemnity, See’s, BNSF, Precision Castparts, Alleghany — and marquee equity positions in Apple, Coca-Cola, Amex.
The public-equity portfolio ledger companion to Berkshire's subsidiary-acquisitions record. Sixty years of equity positions organized alphabetically by ticker — Coca-Cola, American Express, Apple, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, IBM, the airlines basket, Chubb, Chevron, OXY, the five Japanese sogo shosha. Distinct reference format.
The reference case for operating-system integration. Four decades of DBS-installed acquisitions — Beckman Coulter, Pall, Cepheid, Cytiva, Aldevron — plus the three spinoffs (Fortive, Envista, Veralto) that carried DBS with them.
The 11-section overview — Danaher today, the Rales origin & philosophy, DBS with printable practitioner checklists, DBS vs Six Sigma vs TPS, Larry Culp at Danaher and at GE, the three spinoffs, the Rales family-office estate architecture, and the four-archetype compounder taxonomy alongside Berkshire, Constellation, and LVMH. Free memo, 20-tab model, 8-tab DBS toolkit, deck, combined edition.
The subsidiary-by-subsidiary companion to the Danaher acquisitions record. Every material Danaher, Fortive, Envista, and Veralto operating company — Cepheid, Cytiva, Beckman Coulter, Leica, Pall, Aldevron, Abcam, Radiometer, Fluke, Hach, Nobel Biocare — organized alphabetically with current disposition tracked across the three spinoffs.
The definitive Welch-Immelt-Culp arc. 130 years of the American industrial conglomerate — RCA reacquired, NBCU sold to Comcast, GE Capital rise to ~$650B and wind-down, Alstom Power writedown, Cytiva sold to Danaher (~$21.4B), and the 2023-2024 three-way breakup into GE Aerospace, HealthCare, and Vernova.
The reference case for dual American CPG parentage combined by a private-equity operating template. Heinz 1869, Kraft 1903, merged July 2015 by 3G and Berkshire — the 2017 Unilever bid, the 2019 $15.4B writedown, the Planters and Natural Cheese divestitures, and the ongoing turnaround under Patricio and Abrams-Rivera.
The reference case for widely-held Swiss brand roll-up. 160 years of consumer-brand acquisitions across coffee, confectionery, dairy, pet care, water, and health science — the longest continuous compounding record in the collection.
The brand-by-brand companion to the Nestlé acquisitions record. Every material Nestlé brand — Nescafé, Nespresso, KitKat, Purina, Perrier, Gerber, Wyeth, Bountiful vitamins, Blue Bottle, Aimmune — plus divested cohorts (Butterfinger, Poland Spring, Alcon, Wonka) organized alphabetically with current disposition tracked.
The reference case for permanent-capital consumer platform building. Coffee (JDE Peet’s, Keurig Dr Pepper, Panera / Krispy Kreme QSR), pet care (JAB Pet Insurance, National Veterinary Associates), and luxury (Coty).
The reference case for luxury maison assembly. Four decades from the Boussac / Christian Dior takeover through Tiffany, Bulgari, Belmond, Cheval Blanc — 75 maisons controlled through the Arnault family holding architecture.
The house-by-house maisons ledger companion to LVMH's chronological acquisitions record. Every fashion, wines & spirits, watches & jewelry, perfumes & cosmetics, selective retailing, and hospitality maison inside LVMH — Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Tiffany, Bulgari, Sephora, Belmond, Cheval Blanc, Loro Piana, and ~85 more — organized alphabetically. Distinct reference format.
The reference case for global brewing roll-up with zero-based budgeting. From Brahma to AmBev to InBev to Anheuser-Busch to SABMiller — 30+ years of transformational M&A layered on 3G’s ZBB operating discipline.
The brand-by-brand companion to the AB InBev acquisitions record. Every material beer brand alphabetically — Budweiser, Corona, Stella, Beck's, Michelob Ultra, Brahma, Skol, Castle, Cass, Harbin — with country of origin, year acquired, current territory rights, and status. Answers "who owns Corona?" in one filterable page.
The reference case for the professionally-managed Indian family compounder. India's fifth-largest business house — UltraTech carve-out from L&T (~$1B, 2000), Novelis (~$5.7B, 2007, world's largest rolled aluminum), Columbian Chemicals (~$875M, 2010), Jaiprakash cement (~$2.4B, 2015), Binani via NCLT (~$1.1B, 2019), India Cements (~$1.5B, 2024), Birla Opus paint (~$1.2B, 2024). Family-controlled but professionally-managed — strict separation between family and business.
The reference case for the Latin American family-controlled compounder. Four decades of telecom, retail, mining, construction, real estate, and financial-services acquisitions across Mexico, the US, Europe, and the rest of Latin America.
The reference case for the African founder-controlled industrial compounder and the Nigerian archetype. Nearly fifty years from Lagos commodity trading (1977, $3,000 loan from his uncle) to domestic cement, sugar, salt, flour, fertiliser manufacturing (1996–2010) to pan-African cement expansion across ten-plus countries (2010–2019) to the flagship ~$19B+ Dangote Refinery mega-project at Lekki (2013 announcement, 2023 commissioning, 2024 first fuel) — the largest single-train refinery in Africa and largest private industrial project in sub-Saharan African history.
The reference case for British archetype global spirits M&A. 267 years from Arthur Guinness's 1759 St. James's Gate lease through the 1886 Guinness IPO, the 1986 Distillers Company acquisition (~GBP 2.5B), the December 1997 Guinness + Grand Metropolitan merger forming Diageo (~$40B combined), the 2001 Seagram spirits deal with Pernod Ricard (~$5B Diageo share), the 2013 United Spirits India controlling stake (~$2.1B), the 2017 Casamigos deal with George Clooney (~$1B), the 2020 Aviation American Gin deal with Ryan Reynolds (~$610M), and the 34% Moet Hennessy JV with LVMH.
The second Mexican archetype after Slim. From Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc (1890 Monterrey) through OXXO (22,000+ stores), Coca-Cola FEMSA (world's largest bottler), the 2010 Heineken beer-for-stock swap (~$7.4B), the 2016 Socofar pharmacy (~$1.7B), and the 2023 FEMSA Forward strategy that unwound the Heineken stake.
The reference case for family-controlled global brewing under a Dutch pyramid. 160+ years from De Hooiberg (1864 Amsterdam) through Amstel (1968), Cruzcampo (1999), BBAG (2003), the landmark 2008 Scottish & Newcastle joint acquisition with Carlsberg (~$7.7B share), the 2010 FEMSA Cerveza beer-for-shares Mexico entry (~$7.4B), the 2012 Asia Pacific Breweries Tiger deal (~$4.6B), and the 2022 Distell Group South African buildout (~$2.5B).
The reference case for the Indian conglomerate compounder. Six decades from textiles to petrochemicals to refining to telecom (Jio) to retail to renewables — the archetype of family-controlled national-champion acquisition strategy.
The reference case for the Trust-controlled Indian federation compounder. India's oldest business house — Tetley (2000), Corus (~$12.9B, 2007), Jaguar Land Rover (~$2.3B, 2008), Bhushan Steel via NCLT (~$5.2B, 2018), Air India (~$2.4B, 2022), Dholera semiconductor fab (~$11B, 2024). Approximately 66% of Tata Sons is owned by the philanthropic Tata Trusts — a structure with no clear global parallel.
The reference case for the Brazilian operator-investor CPG-and-restaurants compounder. Brahma (1989), AmBev (1999), InBev (2004), Anheuser-Busch (2008, ~$52B), SABMiller (2016, ~$103B), Burger King (2010), Tim Hortons (2014, ~$12.5B), Heinz with Berkshire (2013, ~$23B), Kraft Heinz (2015, ~$46B) — the private-equity operating template of the 2010s written into one arc.
The reference case for the Chinese control-oriented consumer-internet compounder. Taobao, Tmall, Alipay/Ant, Cainiao, UCWeb (~$4.6B), Youku (~$4.4B), Ele.me (~$9.5B), Lazada (~$7-8B), Trendyol, plus the 2020 Ant IPO suspension, 2021 antitrust fine, and 2023 six-way business-group split.
The reference case for the South African industrial-services serial-acquirer conglomerate. Brian Joffe's 28-year founder-CEO tenure produced 200+ acquisitions across SA industrial services (Steiner 1995, Rennies 1996 ~R500M, Prestige 1999), international foodservice (Deli XL 2001, 3663 First Choice UK 2002 ~£300M, Nowaco 2007 ~EUR 200M), the landmark 2016 Bid Corp demerger (~R80B), and post-demerger UK/Ireland facilities management (Noonan 2018 ~EUR 175M, PHS Group 2019). The industrial-services counterpoint to Naspers's technology-and-media archetype.
The reference case for the Hong Kong global cross-border conglomerate. Cheung Kong Plastics (1950), the landmark 1979 Hutchison Whampoa reverse-takeover (~HKD 693M — first ethnic Chinese buyer of a British hong), Hongkong Electric (1985), Husky Oil (1986), the archetype Orange 1998-99 exit (~$14.6B realized), the 3G Group European telecoms buildout, A.S. Watson (Watsons, Superdrug, Kruidvat, Marionnaud), the UK / Australian infrastructure roll-up (Northumbrian Water, UK Power Networks, Wales & West Utilities), the 2015 group restructuring, the 2023-25 Vodafone-3 UK merger (~$19B), and the 2025 Panama Canal ports sale to BlackRock (~$22.8B, pending).
The reference case for the Middle Eastern / Gulf sovereign-wealth-adjacent global investor. Anchored by the 1991 Citicorp rescue (~$590M for 15%, peak ~$8B+ value), the 1994-2010s global hotel buildout (Four Seasons, Fairmont, Movenpick, Plaza, George V), landmark US media and technology stakes (News Corp ~5-7%, Apple, Twitter rolled into Musk X ~$1.9B, Snap ~2.3%, Lyft), the 2007 Tadawul IPO (~$17B), the November 2017 Ritz-Carlton detention (83 days), and the ongoing Jeddah Tower / Kingdom Tower supertall project.
The reference case for the vertical-market software permanent-hold. Hundreds of small VMS acquisitions each year, decentralized under six operating groups, held forever — the compounder Leonard built while writing shareholder letters that read like Buffett annexes.
The portfolio-company companion to the Constellation acquisitions record. Every material VMS operating company organized by operating group — the ~900+ subsidiary book across Volaris, Harris, Jonas, Perseus, Vela, and TSS, plus the 2021 Topicus and 2023 Lumine spinoffs. Structured by operating group, not by year.
The reference case for the Italian family-controlled industrial holding company. Fiat (1899), Ferrari (1969-1988, spun 2016 at ~$10B market cap, now ~$60B+), Lancia (1969), Alfa Romeo (1986, ~$1B from IRI), Chrysler (2009-2014 progressive to 100%, ~$4.5B cumulative), FCA (2014), PartnerRe (2016, ~$6.9B), Stellantis merger (2021, Exor ~14.4%), CNH Industrial, Iveco Group, Juventus, Louboutin (~24% for EUR 541M), Institut Merieux, GEDI, The Economist Group, Philips (~17.5%, ~EUR 2.6B+).
The JSE-listed South African parent of Prosus and the original 2001 investor in Tencent. From a 1915 Stellenbosch Afrikaans newspaper (De Burger) to M-Net (1985), MultiChoice / DStv (1991), the $32M-for-46.5% Tencent bet (2001), and the 2019 Prosus separation architecture. The South African archetype of the century-long compounder.
The reference case for the emerging-market tech-investor compounder. Home of the $32-million-to-$200-billion Tencent stake, plus a diversified global portfolio in food delivery, classifieds, payments, and edtech across India, LatAm, Europe.
The reference case for the Korean platform-and-content compounder. Korean search dominance (~70% share) via Knowledge iN, Line messenger (2011, launched post-Fukushima; Japan/SEA/Taiwan dominance), 2016 Line dual NYSE/Tokyo IPO (~$1.3B), 2021 LY Corporation formation with SoftBank, 2021 Wattpad (~$600M), 2023 Poshmark (~$1.6B, largest Naver cross-border deal), 2024 Webtoon Entertainment NASDAQ IPO. Fellow Korean archetype to Samsung.
The reference case for the Korean chaebol organic-capex compounder. Samsung Electronics (1969 JV with Sanyo), Samsung Heavy Industries, Samsung Biologics, Harman (~$8B, largest ever), LoopPay, SmartThings, Novaled, the 2015 C&T + Cheil Industries succession merger (~$9B), the IMF-crisis Big Deal divestitures, and the post-2020 Lee Jae-yong inheritance-tax era.
The reference case for the concentrated-bet Japanese tech investor. From the original Yahoo Japan and Alibaba investments through Sprint, ARM, WeWork, and the Vision Fund I & II — the compounder written in extremes.
The reference case for the Chinese minority-stake tech compounder. Riot Games (100%), Supercell (~$8.6B, majority), Epic Games (~40% since 2012), WeChat, JD.com and Meituan distributions — 800+ portfolio positions across gaming, content, and consumer internet.
The reference case for the German family-controlled multi-brand auto compounder. Audi (1965), Skoda (1990), SEAT (1986), Bentley (1998, GBP 430M), Bugatti (1998), Lamborghini (1998, ~$110M via Audi), Ducati (2012, ~EUR 860M), Porsche AG (2009-2012, ~EUR 8B via reverse takeover), MAN + Scania + Navistar under Traton, plus the 2015 Dieselgate scandal (~EUR 32B+ cumulative cost) and 2022 Porsche AG IPO (~EUR 75B market cap).
The reference case for the Australian conglomerate compounder. Bunnings (1994, ~AU$594M, now the crown-jewel ~AU$20B+ revenue home improvement operator), Howard Smith (1999, ~AU$1.7B), Coles Group (2007, ~AU$22B — largest Australian public-company acquisition of the era), 2018 Coles demerger (~AU$16-18B distributed to shareholders), Kmart / Target / Officeworks / CSBP / WesCEF chemicals, plus post-Coles portfolio recycling: Kidman Resources lithium (2019, ~AU$776M), Catch Group (2019), API / Priceline Pharmacy (2022, ~AU$764M), Silk Laser (2023).
A practitioner-grade taxonomy of how compounders actually create value through acquisition.
The industrial compounder buys durable earnings power at fair prices and integrates the acquired business into a broader operating architecture — either through portfolio autonomy plus float financing (Berkshire) or through a disciplined operating system installed in the first 100 days (Danaher’s DBS). Nestlé sits on this spectrum as the widely-held Swiss brand roll-up that has compounded across three centuries.
Records: Berkshire Hathaway, Danaher, Nestlé.
The luxury / consumer permanent-capital compounder assembles a portfolio of controlled brands under a family or Reimann-style stewardship structure, holding maisons across generations while investing in brand equity and real estate. Value creation runs through pricing power, category expansion, and hidden real-estate assets carried at book. Bernard Arnault built the reference case; the Reimann family built the second.
Records: LVMH, JAB Holding.
The roll-up compounder consolidates a fragmented sector at scale — brewing (AB InBev), Latin American telecom and industrials (Slim), Indian energy and telecom (Reliance) — using either operational discipline (3G’s zero-based budgeting) or family control across generations to hold the resulting platform indefinitely. Value creation runs through scale economics, national-champion positioning, and disciplined capital allocation across cycles.
Records: AB InBev, Carlos Slim, FEMSA, Reliance Industries, Tata Group, Aditya Birla Group.
The technology-investor compounder deploys capital into technology assets — either through concentrated bets on generational winners (SoftBank’s ARM, Alibaba; Prosus’s Tencent), or through decentralized permanent-hold acquisition of hundreds of vertical-market software businesses (Constellation Software). Value creation runs through network effects, exit optionality on the marquee positions, and permanent compounding on the smaller ones.
Records: Constellation Software, Prosus / Naspers, SoftBank, Tencent Holdings, Alibaba Group.
Analytical roll-up across all eleven records. Illustrative aggregates — individual records carry the fact-checkable per-deal detail.
Geographic coverage. The eleven records span the United States (Berkshire, Danaher), Switzerland (Nestlé), France (LVMH), Belgium / Brazil (AB InBev), Germany / Luxembourg (JAB), Canada (Constellation), Mexico with reach across Latin America (Slim, with Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Peru targets), the Netherlands / South Africa with the Tencent stake reaching into China (Prosus), India (Reliance), Japan with the SoftBank Vision Fund reaching globally (SoftBank), and the United Kingdom via various portfolio companies. Effectively, every major capital market with a home-grown compounder that scales globally is represented.
Family-controlled vs. widely-held. Seven of the eleven records document family-controlled or founder-controlled compounders (LVMH, Slim, Reliance, JAB, SoftBank, and by editorial extension Constellation under Mark Leonard’s influence and Berkshire under Buffett’s multi-decade tenure). Nestlé, Danaher, AB InBev, and Prosus / Naspers sit on the widely-held or professionally-managed end of the spectrum. Both patterns produce durable compounding — the collection catalogues the mechanism, not a preference.
Compounder-pattern distribution. All eleven records document companies that meet the practitioner-grade definition of an acquisition-driven compounder: multiple decades of deployment, consistent capital-allocation philosophy, retained earnings power in the resulting platform. The collection is intentionally not a survey of every acquirer — it is the reference set for the compounders whose acquisition histories teach the pattern.
Three entry paths, three depths — each corresponds to how a specific reader arrived at the site.
Start with Berkshire — the archetype every other record can be compared against. Then read one record from an archetype category adjacent to your professional interest (LVMH if you work in luxury or family enterprise; Danaher if you work in industrial M&A; Constellation if you work in software; SoftBank or Prosus if you work in tech investing). Twenty minutes gets you the pattern.
Sort each record’s table by consideration to isolate the megadeals. Compare capital-deployment cadence across compounders — how many years pass between transformational transactions, and how much capital sits idle in the interim. The pattern of a Berkshire (long dormant periods punctuated by decisive megadeals) versus a Constellation (hundreds of small deals a year, no dormancy) is the reference contrast.
Look for the family permanent-capital compounder pattern. LVMH (France, Financière Agache), Slim (Mexico, Grupo Carso), Reliance (India, Ambani family control), JAB (Germany-Luxembourg, Reimann family), and Nestlé (Switzerland, widely-held with persistent management) show the same pattern in different national and legal contexts. Read them as a set for the reference structure of multi-generational family-office design.
The current eleven records are the beginning of the collection, not the endpoint. Additional archetypes are queued — and new records ship when enough practitioner queries surface a specific compounder that a working analyst, family-office CFO, or M&A operator needs on the shelf. The roadmap is driven by search-console signals and reader correspondence, not by editorial preference alone.
Candidates currently queued for the next wave, in no particular order:
If your firm has a specific compounder on its research desk that isn’t on this list, write in. Reader-driven records get priority.
The acquisition records are the reference layer. The case-study hub, the Berkshire and LVMH Reads, the practitioner guides, and the Foundations references sit alongside them in the four-product library.