The IPO as an Exit Strategy for Venture Capitalists : Regional Lessons from Canada with International Comparisons

In this chapter, we present worldwide VC investment, exit and initial public offering (IPO) data up to 2010. Also, we focus on investment activity at the local level with reference to data from Canada and the U.S. We provide statistics which highlight how differences in investment and IPO exit patterns are important for regional prosperity, with particular reference to Canada and Ontario. We consider the VC market in Ontario, Canada, and abroad, drawing on extensive data from the Thompson Financial SDC VentureXpert database. We consider the amount and structure of VC investment in Ontario and the sources of capital, as well as exits from investments. Comparisons are made in reference to economic conditions in the different jurisdictions. We identify empirical proxies for value-added provided by VCs in different regions that have been well-established in the literature as leading to business innovation and commercialization. These proxies include, for example, staging frequency, syndication, and portfolio sizes