Great Report this week from Morgan Stanley on why there will be a new boom of M&A activity in the next couple of year (i.e. we should see a lot of companies being taken over).  Here are the details on why we are going to see a new wave of M&A activity, according to Morgan Stanley:

1) “Huge levels of cash on corporate balance sheets” set the stage for a new wave of acquisition activity,

2) Recent M&A activity is at a cyclical low, notes the report, but “past troughs have been brief raising the possibility of near-term increase in acquisition activity.”

3) “Furthermore, companies doing acquisitions have performed slightly above the market in recent times, potentially emboldening more management teams to consider deals,” says the report, which analyzed M&A activity between 1983 and 2012.