SAN FRANCISCO—U.S. venture-backed companies are seeing the largest year for liquidity—exits via merger and acquisitions or initial public offerings of stock—since the dot com boom, says Dow Jones VentureOne.

According to VentureOne’s quarterly liquidity report, 90 companies raised more than; $10.5 billion through mergers and acquisitions in the third quarter this year, up 31 percent from the same period last year and the most since 2000.

“So far this year, $28.4 billion has been raised via M&A transactions and another $4.7 billion was raised in public offerings. This virtually guarantees that 2007 will be the largest years for venture-backed liquidity in the U.S. since the dot com boom,” said Jessica Canning, director of Global Research for VentureOne.

Information technology companies accounted for the largest amount of M&A activitity, ringing up $7.4 billion, a 64 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

Eleven VC-backed companies filed for IPOs, raising $662.5 million, up 4 percent from 2006. Also, 46 other companies filed for IPOs in the third quarter.

Most of the largest deals involved New York and California based companies. The single largest was Sunnyvale, CA-based Yahoo’s buy of New York based Right Media Inc. for $812 million.

On the Web: www.ventureone.com

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