While investors were away enjoying their Saturday nights, AT&T announced a $85-billion deal to buy Time Warner.
If the weekend announcement seems like unusual timing, it's because it is. Less than 3 percent of all mergers worth $100 million or more over the last decade were announced over the weekend, and most of those announcement were on Sundays, according to a CNBC analysis.
Of course, the most popular day for announcements traditionally is "Merger Monday," which gives companies a full week of media and investor attention to capitalize on the news. But the incentives seem to be different for the largest mergers like AT&T/Time Warner deal, which are more likely to face media pushback and regulator scrutiny. Those big deals are more likely than smaller mergers to be announced on weekends.