Maybe a little New Year’s Eve champagne helped soften venture capitalists’ view of 2008. But when they return to their offices, U.S. VCs might heave a sigh of relief when they turn their calendars to 2009.

That’s because 2008 was the driest in five years for initial public offerings and merger and acquisition exits.

Dow Jones VentureSource confirmed that bad news Friday in its quarterly study of venture liquidity.

Venture-backed companies generated $24.1 billion in liquidity via IPOs and M&A in 2008, a 58 percent decline versus $57.6 billion the prior year. M&A also fell sharply, dropping 54 percent to $23.5 billion in deals for 325 venture-backed companies. The $3.9 billion of M&A activity for 65 companies in the fourth quarter was the lowest quarterly transaction number in nine years.

“Overall, the median amount paid for a VC-backed company in 2008 was roughly $45 million—half of the median $90 million paid in 2007,” Jessica Canning, global research director for VentureSource, said in a statement.  “Since the fourth quarter of 2007, we’ve seen the median acquisition price drop steadily from quarter to quarter in lock-step with the decline of M&A transactions.”

The top fourth quarter M&A deal was eBay’s $945 million acquisition of online transaction firm Bill Me Later, while the No. 1 deal of the year was Dell’s $1.4 billion of Equalogic, a data storage company.

Among the companies that mounted an IPO in 2008, the median amount of venture funding fell 19 percent to $56 million. The median period it took companies to reach liquidity climbed to 8.3 years versus 7.2 years in 2007.