The roll-up gambit should result in a whole greater than the sum of its parts; why hasn't it?
Several years ago, in a spasm of stupidity, I bought a modest amount of stock in various roll-up consolidators that had erupted in our industry. From an investment standpoint, I probably would have done better using the money to buy lottery tickets; however, a secondary purpose was to keep tabs on those companies from a shareholder's perspective. At least that paid off with receipt of a recent mailing from the Sheet Metal Workers International Union, which like me, owns shares in Comfort Systems USA.
The SMWIA was surveying shareholders to see whether they would support an initiative to forbid the company from granting executives new stock options without shareholder approval. This was in response to a revelation in Comfort Systems' 2000 proxy statement that the company had reissued 300,000 options to five executives because "the previous options granted to these individuals were at exercise prices significantly higher than the year-end 2000 market value."