Ernst and Young puts out a quarterly report on the VC industry. It’s full of fantastic data (from their VentureOne group). I just got my book today and am still sorting through it – I’ll put up a post soon with some of the take-aways.
Something that struck me right away was the list of the top acquirers of VC-backed companies. They are :
IBM
(5)
Cisco
(5)
Tekelec
(4)
C-COR
(4)
Broadcom
(4)
Thomson
(3)
Motorola
(3)
IAC
(3)
Alcatel
(3)
Not surprising to see IBM and Cisco on the list. I was surprised not to see Microsoft , Mercury (both of whom seem to be pretty active acquirers) and a few other names on the list (didn’t Siebel acquire 3 or 4 companies last year?). My real surprise though was that this group of the 9 top acquirers of venture companies only accounted for only about 8% of all the venture backed m&a last year. I thought there would have been more of a concentration of buyers, but apparently the majority of the list is made up of companies that bought only one venture backed company during the year.