The buyers figure that the best way to bolster earnings is to acquire volume and then try to improve margins in a business where fractions of a penny can add up to millions of dollars.
In a sign of the newspaper industry's continued struggles, Henry is expected to pay $70m for the Globe, its websites and associated businesses – a fraction of the price the Times paid for the newspaper two decade ago.
Only £80m over three years has been allocated in grants to homeowners and businesses, a fraction of the cost of widening part of the M6, and those grants have since been cut back and made more difficult to get.
Entrepreneurs atypically studied agriculture or business, but significant fractions from each college became entrepreneurs.
Although the microstock business represents a fraction of the $2 billion market for stock photos, the low micropayment prices could take business from sellers of higher-price images as more sites pop up.
Finally, after absorbing five years of operating losses and losing a considerable amount of senior management's time, the parent decided to divest the business at a fraction of its purchase price.
Andreas Wald, a professor of management and strategy at the European Business School in Paris, said that trains and roads could bring in as much business at a fraction of the cost.
The deal prompted anger after it emerged Google had agreed to pay Italy €227m (£172m) in back taxes for 2009 to 2013 - even though Google's Italian business is a fraction of the size of its UK sales.
As Alepian said, "Let me remind you, that our Application Performance Monitoring (APM) business represents a fraction of our overall revenues.
However, this also meant that the other lines of business paid a fraction of what they should have been paying.
