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Bill Radke: Here’s another sign the financial gloom is lifting: the market for initial public offerings — IPOs — has been just lifeless for the past year and a half. But today, five new companies are on deck to raise money from the public and get listed on stock exchanges. That’s the busiest IPO week since December 2007. Reporter Jill Barshay has more.

Jill Barshay: When investors are losing money on blue chip stocks like IBM, they’re not in any sort of mood for speculative investments like IPOs.

Matt Regan is a senior managing partner at investment bank WR Hambrecht. He says investors are up for risk again because the market’s jumped almost 50 percent since March.

Matt Regan: Any time the markets take off like that, what’s known as the window opens for IPOs. And you know what happens is everybody that’s got, you know, a company they think can tap the public markets rushes to get it out into the momentum of the marketplace.

Regan says there’s a big backlog of high-growth companies that are desperate to go public. This week includes A123 Systems. It makes batteries for hybrid electric cars. And Chinese companies are expected to be a big part of this next IPO wave.

In New York, I’m Jill Barshay for Marketplace.