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A bunch of independent research reports are out on worldwide venture capital and private equity activity during the April to June quarter of 2009. Overall, fundraising and investment levels continue to be depressed, compared to the same period in 2008. But, the second quarter numbers mark some improvement over the January to March 2009 quarter.

• The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) reports that venture capital exits in the US market have shown “mild improvement”. Initial public offerings (IPO), the preferred exit route for venture capital investors, have made a small comeback. Five venture-backed companies hit the capital markets to raise $720.7 million in the April to June 2009 quarter. This is a significant improvement over the full year 2008, which saw only six IPOs worth $470.2 million. More details in the NVCA release here.
• Preqin reports $76 billion in global private equity (includes venture capital) fundraising during the April to June 2009 quarter. This is a 28% growth over the $60 billion raised in the January to March 2009 quarter. However, compared to the $213 billion raised in the April to June 2008 quarter, it is still a steep climb up to normal levels. Full details in the Preqin release here.
• PitchBook reports global private equity investments (does not include venture capital) at $11.11 billion in the April to June 2009 quarter, down 18.5% from $13.64 billion in the January to March 2009 quarter. The research firm concludes that investors are still waiting for the investment environment to improve. It estimates that investors are sitting on $400 billion in available funds. Details in the PitchBook release here.

Update: The NVCA has just put out the Q1 venture capital investment numbers — $3 billion across 549 deals. This represents a 47% decline from the $5.7 billion invested in Q4 2008 across 866 deals. The decline this quarter is even more worrying when compared to Q1 2008 when venture capitalists invested $7.8 billion – which is a drop of 61.5% — GigaOm post. Also read the NVCA’s analysis of early stage investments by sector and stage during the quarter in the release release.

Fundraising in the US venture capital market has been slow, sometimes non-existent, for some time now and it isn’t getting better just yet. The Q1 2009 numbers released by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) report that 40 venture capital funds raised $4.3 billion, down almost 40% from 7.1 billion raised by 71 funds in Q1 2009 – see details in the release here. Only three out of the 40 that raised capital are new funds. There is however one small positive. Fundraising in Q1 2009 has been slightly higher than Q4 2008. Still, it is going to be hard for startups to come by money for a while longer, both in the US and in India, which depends quite heavily on the US venture capital industry for fund inflows.

Not surprisingly, it is not looking good on the exits front either. Q1 2009 saw M&A-led (merger and acquisition) exits worth $654.3 million against $4.54 billion in Q1 2008, reports an April 1 NVCA release. There were no IPO-led exits. Another worrying aspect is that exit deals that earned venture capitalists a 4x return (four times the original investment), which the NVCA terms a top return, accounted for just 23% of total exits in Q1 2009 against 46% in Q1 2008.