Serial acquirers are companies that acquire smaller companies to grow and they can make for excellent investments. They use the cash flow produced by each acquisition to buy even more companies, repeating the process and compounding shareholder value. There are many serial acquirers that have been hugely successful. The best-known of them is Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. But there are others who have been tremendous successes in their own right. Markel Corp, for example, is like a mini Berkshire. It is an insurance company at its core, but has used its profit and insurance float to acquire numerous companies and build a large public stock portfolio. Over the last 18 years, Markel’s share price has risen by 286%, or 7.8% compounded. In the software space, Constellation Software has made a name for itself by acquiring vertical market software (VMS) companies. Its targets are usually small but have fairly predictable and recurring streams of cash flow....