NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - That Wall Street bankers need the initial public offering market to bounce back is an understatement.

According to Thomson Financial, proceeds from IPOs plunged 41 percent in 2001, following a 41 percent drop in 2000. That's a big reason why revenues for seven major Wall Street firms (Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley) fell an average of 5 percent in 2002, following a 12 percent decline in 2001.

And the stock prices of these companies have fallen, on average, 35 percent during the past two years, according to Baseline.

What's more, concerns about Iraq, the murky economy and continued volatility in the stock market still do not make this an ideal time for private companies to go public.

Even so, there's hope yet, as public companies continue to sell stakes in their subsidiaries to the public. That was the case last year with just two deals -- Tyco's sale of finance arm CIT Group and Citigroup's offering of Travelers Property & Casualty -- raising $8.5 billion, or nearly 40 percent of total IPO proceeds in 2002.

Jeffery Hirschkorn, a senior research analyst specializing in IPOs for investment boutique ParkSouth Securities, thinks this trend will continue in 2003. Hirschkorn says five widely discussed deals could be cumulatively worth about $14 billion. And since underwriters typically receive 8 percent of the deal size as a fee, there could be $1.1 billion up for grabs for investment banks.

Let the scramble begin.

Verizon Wireless The sale of this unit co-owned by Baby Bell Verizon and British telecom Vodafone actually filed to go public in August 2000 and issued revised plans in November 2001. But a sale of the unit could help spark a round of consolidation in the wireless sector since Verizon could use the wireless stock and not its own stock to do deals.

Plus, there has been increased speculation Vodafone is looking for a way to exit the partnership and an IPO could help facilitate that. Hirschkorn estimates Verizon Wireless could fetch as much as $5 billion in an IPO.

Cingular Verizon's competitor Cingular, which is co-owned by the two other major Baby Bells, SBC Communications and BellSouth, has also been often mentioned as a potential IPO for 2003. Hirschkorn says Cingular would likely raise about $1 billion from a sale to the public. Cingular has yet to file for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Time Warner Cable Another company that has talked about an IPO but hasn't filed the requisite paperwork with the SEC is Time Warner Cable, a unit of AOL Time Warner (which also owns CNN/Money). AOL Time Warner executives have publicly said they are eyeing the second quarter of 2003 as the time frame for an IPO.

The company is under pressure to do the deal because AOL Time Warner has agreed to buy out the stake that cable rival Comcast owns in Time Warner Entertainment, a joint venture that owns a majority of AOL's cable assets.

AT&T and AOL Time Warner were the original partners in this deal but Comcast inherited AT&T's stake through its purchase of AT&T's cable assets. Hirschkorn thinks Time Warner Cable could wind up raising $5 billion in an IPO.

Medco and CP&P The two other potential big deals are holdovers from 2002. Merck pulled the plug on an IPO for its pharmacy benefits unit Medco last year due to the market's continued woes while paper and building products giant Georgia-Pacific tabled the sale of its packaging division CP&P as well. Hirschkorn says Medco could raise $1 billion and CP&P as much as $2 billion in public offerings.

However, it's quite possible only a few of these deals will make it to the market this year. And perhaps none of them will. Although it might seem as if the sale of a part of a reputable company like Verizon or Georgia-Pacific is a far less risky bet than investing in a start-up going public, that isn't really the case.

"There is a vein of distrust in the marketplace for many big deals. They are viewed not as a safe haven, but a financial bailout for the issuers and the shareholders of the parent company," says David Menlow, president of IPOfinancial.com, a research firm.

To that end, AOL Time Warner has more than $28 billion in debt as of September 30, so it's possible the company could unload a portion of that debt on the cable business since cable companies typically carry higher debt loads. Likewise, Verizon has $57.5 billion in debt while SBC carries a debt burden of about $24 billion.

"There are fears that companies will offload a disproportionate level of debt on the IPOs," Menlow says. "Why should new investors assume all these risks?"

What's more, if the stock market can't snap out of its funk, then these deals could easily get pushed back to 2004, says Richard Peterson, market strategist for Thomson Financial. And that would likely lead to more lay-offs at the big Wall Street firms, he notes.

"There's not much for IPO investors or bankers to get excited about," Peterson says.