A look at financing, M&A, and alliance activity October–December 2014
• By Maureen Riordan and Amanda Micklus
Q4 device financing reached $902 million versus Q3’s $734 million, while device M&A dollar volume increased $19 billion, from Q3’s $4.9 billion. Diagnostics companies raised $750 million, an 85% rise over the previous quarter’s $405 million; although diagnostics M&A totaled just $1 billion, it was the most deal-active quarter of 2014 with 11 transactions.
Device companies finished 2014 raising $902 million during the fourth quarter, bringing the full-year financing total to $4 billion, remaining exactly flat from 2013's figure. (See Exhibit 1.) Once again, late-stage venture rounds were the dominating source of funding, together representing $1.1 billion of the $4 billion. But IPOs made a huge comeback, one that we started to see in Q4 2013.
