Monday, July 24, 2006

U.S. Venture Capital Investments Hit $6.7B in Q2

Ernst & Young LLP and VentureOne are reporting today that venture capital investments hit $6.7 billion in the latest quarter, the highest quarterly investment level since 2001. The firms said in their quarterly venture capital report that that $6.73B was directed into 619 deals, a deal count increase of 3 percent over second quarter of last year. Capital investments were up 5 percent. The investments were the most venture capital invested in a single quarter since the fourth quarter of 2001. E&Y and VentureOne attributed the increase to capital infusions into health care an information technology. Energy investments were also among the most active segments, according to the study. For Southern California, E&Y and VentureOne report that there were a total of 65 venture capital deals, worth $730.47M. The deal count was roughly flat compared to Q2 of last year, which had 64 venture capital deals, with total capital investment below last year, when SoCal received $791.53M in funding. The report found that Shepherd Ventures and Enterprise Partners were the most active Southern California VC firms, followed by Mission Ventures. PricewaterhouseCoopers releases its MoneyTree quarterly results tomorrow.

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