76 hi-tech exits, worth $10.6 billion

The year 2006 was the year hi-tech made its comeback. A new record was set as 76 companies were sold, or merged with rivals.

According to research firm IVC-Online, combined exits in 2006 ran even  higher than the bubble year of 2000, when 64 deals were done, and higher than 2005, with 70 exits.

The more important figure is in dollars: $10.58 billion total for the deals in 2006.

This is also a record, and is one-third of the entire figure for the past six years since 2000.

The figures do not include Berkshire Hathaway's purchase of 80% of Iscar Blades for $4 billion. But even that giant deal pales compared with HP's acquisition of Mercury Interactive for $4.5 billion.

Other notable purchases were SanDisk's buyout of flash-memory maker Msystems for $1.55 billion; and Verifone's purchase of Lipman Electronic Engineering for $783 million. That led to Verifone's dual-listing in Tel Aviv, where it leaped straight onto the leading TA-25 index.

Sales of hi-tech startups brought in $3 billion of the over $10 billion total for 2006.

As for initial public offerings, it was a good year, too. In 2006, 20 Israeli hi-tech companies raised $693 million in stock markets in the U.S., Europe, Asia - and of course Tel Aviv.

The biggest Israeli IPO was for Playtech on London's AIM, which raked in $460 million.

Other big IPOs included Allot Communications, which raised $78 million on the Nasdaq; and IncrediMail, which raised $49 million in the Nasdaq's smallcap list.

The total of mergers, sales and IPOs of Israeli hi-tech companies in 2006 reached $11.2 billion.