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While 2009 continued a downward trend as one of the worst recessions in U.S. history, the decline for venture-backed mergers and acquisitions has not been as severe as the dot-com bust in 2001 and 2002.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
While 2009 continued a downward trend as one of the worst recessions in U.S. history, the decline for venture-backed mergers and acquisitions has not been as severe as the dot-com bust in 2001 and 2002.<\/p>\n
New figures from the National Venture Capital Association<\/a> show that in the last quarter of 2009, M&A hit $7.8 billion, up from the previous year’s mark of just over $2 billion. Overall, 2009’s total of $12.6 billion could not equal 2008’s $13.6 billion total.<\/p>\n Sponsor<\/em> Mergers and acquisitions totaled over $68 billion in 2000, only to fall below $8 billion by 2002 following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. In contrast, 2007’s M&A total of $29 billion has declined to just over $12 billion in 2009 – a much more smooth rate of decay which has begun to flatten out. <\/p>\n Mark Heesen, president of the NVCA, says they expect to see continued improvement throughout 2010. “Clearly, we have a long way to go towards a full recovery but we are encouraged by the increasing acquisition values and the number of companies that have filed a registration with the SEC to go public,” he says.<\/p>\n A late boost in the fourth quarter of 2009 has helped startups from reliving the experiences from earlier in the decade, the largest of which came from Amazon<\/a>’s July purchase<\/a> of Internet shoe seller Zappos<\/a> for $930 million. This acquisition helped internet specific purchases climb to $2.2 billion in Q4 2009 – a near seven-fold increase from 2008’s final quarter.<\/p>\n Discuss<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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