‘93 Marks 2-Year High for Mergers and Buyouts : Acquisitions: Corporations have spent $314 billion so far this year to take over other companies.

Corporations completed $314 billion worth of mergers, acquisitions and spinoffs in 1993, the highest level in two years.

The dollar volume of worldwide mergers completed through today exceeded 1992’s tally of $299 billion, according to Securities Data Co.

“It’s a good number,” said Steven Wolitzer, a Lehman Bros. investment banker. Wolitzer said he does not expect any big mergers in the final days of the year to change these totals.

Mergers are still behind the pace of the 1980s. The record year for acquisitions was 1989, when $507 billion in transactions were completed.

Record stock prices, the changing regulatory landscape and signs of an improving U.S. economy caused mergers to flourish in 1993.

For example, the prospect of government controls on health care costs drove drug giant Merck & Co. to acquire Medco Containment Services Inc. for $6 billion in November.

Agreeing with the view that bigger is more profitable, Columbia Healthcare Corp. went on a buying spree that included purchasing Galen Health Care Inc. for $3.4 billion in September.

Mergers will probably be more numerous next year, Morgan Stanley Group Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Richard Fisher said.

Also, the biggest mergers announced in 1993 have yet to be completed. Bell Atlantic Corp.’s $21-billion merger with Tele-Communications Inc. is pending. So is American Telephone & Telegraph Co.’s $12.6-billion purchase of McCaw Cellular Communications. And the $10-billion bidding war for Paramount Communications Inc. has yet to be resolved.

The increased activity is a boon to Wall Street, where merger advisory fees had declined for the last three years. The Securities Industry Assn. said revenues from “other securities-related activities,” which include advising in mergers, fell to $14.5 billion in 1992 from a peak of $20.3 billion in 1989.

Goldman, Sachs & Co., the nation’s biggest investment banking partnership, was the leading adviser in completed mergers this year, with 165 transactions valued at $50.5 billion, or 16.1% of the total.

Morgan Stanley & Co. ranked second, with 92 transactions worth $37.4 billion, or 11.9% of the market.