Wednesday, April 2, 2008

VC Backed Exits Drop

San Francisco-based Dow Jones VentureSource said today that U.S. venture backed firms are seeing their lowest liquidity levels since 2005. According to the firm, liquidity generated through mergers and acquisitions and IPOs has dropped to $8.2B in Q1 of 2008, the lowest quarterly total since the fourth quarter of 2005. Dow Jones, which released its Quarterly U.S. Liquidity Report today, said the totals represented just 80 M&A transactions and six IPOs. The M&As represented $7.8M in liquidity, down from $10.2M in Q1 of 2007. IPOs only totaled $392M, down from $1.2B last year in the first quarter. Dow Jones blamed the slowdown on the effect of the broader financial markets.