the previous quarter, but nevertheless brings the total number of venture-backed acquisition deals to 420 for the year. That’s the highest deal volume since 1985, when such record keeping began. Total valuation (for the 120 deals in 2010 in which the valuations were disclosed) amounted to $18.3 billion, still far short of the $29.5 billion total disclosed for 169 deals in 2007.
Data released this morning by Dow Jones VentureSource also shows a strong uptick in exit activity, although the numbers vary from the “Exit Poll” released today by the NVCA and Thomson/Reuters.
Dow Jones said 14 IPOs raised about $1.1 billion during the fourth quarter, bringing the totals to 46 venture-backed IPOs and $3.4 billion for the full year in 2010. The annual total was more than five times the eight IPOs that raised $903 million in 2009, according to Dow Jones.
In M&A activity, Dow Jones said 109 companies were acquired for a total of $10.5 billion in the fourth quarter, a 7 percent decline in mergers and acquisitions from the same quarter last year. Dow Jones said 445 deals raised $33.9 billion for the entire year, and represented a 17 percent increase in deal activity in 2009, when 381 deals raised $20.8 billion.
“Exit activity is staging a comeback but capital netted lagged as large M&As and IPOs were still uncommon in 2010,” said Jessica Canning, director of global research for Dow Jones VentureSource, in a statement released this morning.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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