Very rarely is a company of any type acquired to just be left intact. Typically you acquire a company for a) the talent b) the technology c) you believe you can make changes to the business to drastically increase the margin. Typically that would be integrating it into your company and sharing resources.

I think you are going to be hard pressed to find a company that was acquired and basically left alone and then flourished.

You know those movies where one civilization just destroys another and abuses the resources, then moves on. It's kind of like that, just slightly more "civilized".