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For the last few years, a number of American venture capitalists have been visiting China to study how to break into the markets of that emerging giant. But one has spent time there studying exits — not from China, but from his start-ups back in the United States.

Already, there are a small but growing number of venture-capital-backed companies based overseas that have gone public in the nations where they have operations. Much rarer are examples of American-based start-ups that have sold shares on the foreign markets.

But a majority of venture capitalists said they thought the rarity if such listings was destined to change — and soon.

In a report published Monday, the National Venture Capital Association found that 57 percent of the 200 investors surveyed expected a growing propensity in the industry to take American companies public in overseas markets in 2007.

The chief reason for interest: U.S. markets have not exactly been friendly places of late for venture capitalists to resell their interests in start-ups. In 2005, 56 venture-backed companies went public in the United States, down from 93 in 2004 and a high of 273 in 1996. (About 37 venture-backed companies had gone public as of the end of September this year.)

Venture capitalists have made a whipping boy of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the 2002 corporate accountability law that they say has markedly raised the cost of domestic public offerings. Talk by venture capitalists of taking companies public overseas could include some hot air, part of the industry’s effort to persuade American regulators of the seriousness of their frustration.

iht: U.S. venture capitalists look to China to take companies public

Chinese companies are the NASDAQ’s biggest source of new listings and don’t appear to be discouraged by stricter legal requirements, the US exchange’s international president said.

Chinese companies now account for 29 of about 3,300 companies listed on NASDAQ, said the president of NASDAQ International, Charlotte Crosswell, in an interview in Shanghai on Wednesday.

The exchange also lists 15 firms from Hong Kong, a Chinese special autonomous region, putting China third behind first-place Israel and second-place Canada in having the most non-US listings on the NASDAQ, Crosswell said.

Chinese firms are biggest source of growth for NASDAQ