Corporate Marriage Streak To Continue

Morgan Stanley Group Inc., the top firm in a record year for mergers and acquisitions, expects a continued cavalcade of corporate link-ups in 1996.

The New York-based investment bank has advised companies on 117 mergers and takeovers worth $137 billion this year, according to Securities Data Co. Morgan expects the banking and telecommunications industries to continue consolidating in 1996.

This years’s hottest area, media, is likely to cool next year, however.

“We’re coming off such a record level of activity, it’s hard to predict some huge uplift,” said Robert W. Kitts, a principal in Morgan’s M&A department. “We’d expect to see similarly robust levels of activity.”