It was an improbable love affair, so saccharine and brazenly put on show that it made snobbish Paris high society reach for the sick bag and embarrassed one of France's biggest media and arms conglomerates.
The IMF is also concerned that in many cases, asset management firms are owned by large banks, creating what it calls "potentially very influential and complex mega conglomerates".
Some manufacturers, including e-cigarette makers that are part of big tobacco conglomerates, have applied for their products to be given medicinal licences as nicotine replacement therapies similar to gums, sprays and patches.
But the most pernicious peddlers of apps are not the small guys but the publishing conglomerates whose apps are essentially crippled, disconnected mini-websites designed to make sure that users are corralled in ways that suit their publishers.
The challenge will be to convince markets that financial conglomerates still make sense.
Already some of Asia's sprawling conglomerates are reaching the limits of the ability of their founding families to manage them.
The biggest of them all, PricewaterhouseCoopers, derived only about 40% of last year's revenues of $19.6 billion from traditional accounting and auditing services.The firms are diversified conglomerates that span the globe hand-in-hand with their clients.
Finding conglomerates willing to sell orphan units has been difficult lately, too.
Nor should India's conglomerates, particularly family-owned ones, be slammed for rigging markets, as they are said to in other countries such as Mexico and Israel.
Take its overall profitability.In other countries family conglomerates have been merely a phase of capitalism, and have declined of their own accord.
Second, they are conglomerates, often with one or two core activities and a long and growing tail of others.
