The Dow Jones VentureOne third-quarter liquidity report showed that 90 venture companies announced more than $10.5 billion in merger and acquisitions transactions, the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal reported.

This is the highest quarterly report since 2000 and a 31 percent increase from the same period last year.

Yahoo Inc.’s $812 million takeover of Right Media Inc. was the largest acquisition. The next-largest was Google Inc.’s $625 million purchase of Postini Inc.

The third quarter brought initial public offerings from 11 venture-backed companies to raise $662.5 million, up 4 percent from the previous year. The fourth quarter is set to bring even more IPOs; during the quarter just ended, another 46 companies filed to go public.



“So far this year, $28.4 billion has been raised via M&A transactions and another $4.7 billion raised in public offerings,” said Jessica Canning, Director of Global research for Dow Jones VentureOne. “This virtually guarantees that 2007 will be the largest year for venture-backed liquidity – both in terms of IPOs and M&As – in the U.S. since the dot-com boom.”