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Steve Chiotakis: Well the financial crisis wasn’t the best time to take a company public. Investors got scared and lost their appetite for anything remotely risky. But as the economy has recovered, they’ve gotten a little more confident. Bankers are hoping that’ll mean more initial public offerings. Alisa Roth reports.

Alisa Roth: No matter how you count it, 2009 was a terrible year for IPOs.

Jay Ritter is a finance professor and IPO expert at the University of Florida. By his count, there were just 41 IPOs last year. He predicts 2010 will look a lot like the last quarter of 2009, when things picked up to two or three offerings a week.

Jay Ritter: Not very healthy by the standards of the 80s and 90s, but a lot better than it was a year ago at this time, when the IPO market was dead.

But the fact that there are any IPOs at all is a good thing.

Alex Gendzier advises banks and companies at the law firm Jones Day in New York:

Alex Gendzier: The return of IPOs represents to some degree a normalization of the flow of capital in this country, which is a very positive thing.

More IPOs doesn’t necessarily mean a windfall for banks, but underwriting can be a gateway to more lucrative business from those companies in the future.

In New York, I’m Alisa Roth for Marketplace.