Buzz Archive:
Israel Venture Update - Current Summary of M&As and IPOs 2007

by Efrat Zakai, IVC Research Center, 4/1/2008

In 2007, 27 Israeli high-tech companies raised $701 million through initial public offerings on US, European and Israeli stock exchanges. IPO dollar volumes have been relatively stable in the past three years: $692 million was raised through IPOs in 2006 and $694 million in 2005. Noteworthy offerings in 2007 include BigBand, Mellanox and Veraz, which raised $160 million, $117 million and $72 million, respectively. All three companies were listed on NASDAQ.

VC-backed companies raised $538 million in 13 IPOs, including the three companies mentioned above.

M&A activity involving Israeli companies that were either acquired or merged totaled $3.2 billion in 2007 in 75 deals - the second highest number of M&A deals in any one year to date. Dollar figures for 2007 show a 67 percent decline from 2006's unusually high $10 billion, still the third highest dollar amount of M&A activity since 2000. The most noteworthy M&A deals of 2007 were AOL's $363 million acquisition Quigo; IBM's acquisition of XIV, estimated at $300 million; and NICE Systems' $280 million acquisition of Actimize.

Activity continues to be strong, is this an indicator of relative strength for 2008?