A sudden and sharp increase in mergers and acquisitions in India over the last two decades has attracted a great attention of scholars to understand the activity. This study brings forth some interesting recent patterns about the same. Using a much wider span period of 17 years’, precisely from 1996 to 2012, it is shown that mergers are coming in waves. Further, they are not occurring randomly. Instead, the activity is concentrated in a few industries, and that too, in a few years within a given industry. These statistics imply that certain industry- specific time variant factors are significant in causing the substantial restructuring.

KEYWORDS: Mergers and acquisitions, clustering, wave pattern