The Venture Alley - A blog about business and legal issues important to entrepreneurs, startups, venture capitalists and angel investors.

CONTRIBUTED BYTrent Dykestrent.dykes@dlapiper.com Compliments of our colleague Christopher Paci, the Chair of DLA Piper’s US capital markets practice, below is a review of 2012 US equity and debt capital markets activity. Equity.  US equity and equity-related proceeds totaled $244.5B from 795 deals, a 32.7% increase compared to 2011. IPOs accounted for $40.9B, or 16% of the total, in 2012, up 18% from 2011 (excluding Facebook, down 27%). Follow-on equity offerings represented $182B, or 74%, of the total, up 45% from 2011. IPOs.  Overall, the IPO market was modestly more active in 2012, with 128 deals closed, up 2% from 2011. IPO activity consisted... More

CONTRIBUTED BYAndrew Ledbetterandrew.ledbetter@dlapiper.com As a quick follow up on this topic from a few months ago (prior post can be read here), the SEC has approved alternatives to Nasdaq's historical $4 minimum bid price listing standard.  Under the new alternative listing standards, a security may qualify for listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market if:  $3/share price -- for at least five consecutive business days prior to approval, the security has a minimum closing price of at least $3 per share and the issuer has either: Equity Standard:  (A) stockholders’ equity of at least $5M; (B) market value of publicly held shares of at... More

CONTRIBUTED BYAndrew Ledbetterandrew.ledbetter@dlapiper.com This week Nasdaq filed a proposed rule change with the SEC to adopt an alternative to the $4 initial listing bid price requirement.  As proposed, a company would be able to list with a:... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association issued their “Exit Poll” report for Q3 2011 today, showing a marked slowdown in venture-backed IPOs compared to Q2 2011.  According to the report, only 5 venture-backed companies went public in the third quarter (compared to 22 in Q2 2011), while M&A activity among companies with VC investors was down slightly in volume (33 in Q3 versus 35 in Q2) but up 8% in aggregate deal value ($6.3B) relative to Q2 2011 ($5.8B).  John Cook of Geekwire has a post up today about it as well.  The full report is available here or... More