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The number of venture-backed initial public offerings awaiting their stock market debut more than doubled at the start of 2007 with a tech filing from Omneon Video Networks marking a late-entry addition to the roster.

Hailing largely from the tech sector, the ranks of venture-backed IPOs swelled to 36 as of Tuesday, up from 16 in the year-ago period, but down from 51 at the start of the busy fourth quarter of 2006, according to a survey by the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Financial.

Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, said an overhaul of the Sarbanes-Oxley law could help small companies eying IPOs.

“There is the potential to see measurable Sarbanes-Oxley relief for smaller public companies in 2007, which would be a welcome boost for the U.S. IPO market,” Heeson said. “In absence of this reform, however, venture capitalists will look at other liquidity paths — foreign exchanges or sale to financial intermediaries — as viable exit alternatives in the coming year.”

Marketwatch: Venture-backed IPOs perking up

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