Ipos Raise Record Capital Figures For 145 Companies During Quarter

Companies selling shares on Wall Street for the first time raised $12.3 billion since the beginning of April, a record for a single quarter, Securities Data Corp. said.

ore than 145 companies sold shares in initial public offerings, breaking the previous record of $12.2 billion, set in the last three months of 1995, Securities Data said.

High-technology offerings have led the charge, raising $5.5 billion, or almost $2 billion more than the prior record. Almost half of the current period’s high-tech volume comes from Lucent Technologies $2.6 billion sale in April.

Morgan Stanley Inc. and Goldman, Sachs & Co. accounted for more than 54 percent of the quarter’s IPOs underwritten to date, Securities Data said.

Morgan Stanley raised the most money, leading investment banks in underwriting five IPOs with domestic proceeds of $3.45 billion this quarter. Goldman, Sachs, had the largest number of IPOs, leading investment banks in 13 sales, raising $3.26 billion to date.

There are 124 more issues valued at $4.5 billion expected to begin trading by June 30. The list includes IPOs expected from Donna Karan International Inc. and MoneyGram Payment Systems.

Demand for new shares is being driven by the record amount of money pouring into stock mutual funds. Investors dumped a record $99.13 billion into stock funds in the first four months of the year.