Aftermath: IPOs
By Lee Clifford

(FORTUNE Magazine) – IPOs, as bankers like to say, have two classic enemies: uncertainty and volatility. On Sept. 11, a supply of both flooded the market.

Not that things were going swimmingly before the attacks. "We've spent the first eight months of the year running a race with broken legs," says David Menlow, president of IPOfinancial.com. By this point last year 324 companies had gone public, according to Dealogic CommScan; this year, 61 have.

Blame risk aversion. The tech swoon, the election fiasco, and worries about the economy have kept investors away. The situation is not likely to change anytime soon.

Though Weight Watchers filed for an IPO, and some secondary offerings such as Annaly Mortgage have gone out since the attacks, in general bankers are waiting to see if the stock market can find surer footing. UBS Warburg had been shopping a bunch of companies--specifically a slew of health-care firms--but those plans are on hold until "we start to feel okay about the market, like there's not a 30% drop around the corner," says Mark Connelly, head of U.S. Equity Capital Markets for the firm.

Some deals that were in the queue may never make it to the market. Less than a week after the attacks, Continental Airlines postponed the planned IPO of its ExpressJet subsidiary. The prognosis, say some, is two words that travelers and investors alike dread: grounded indefinitely.

--Lee Clifford