The Intersections (INTX: chart) IPO scored an opening-day gain of over 45 percent when it started trading on Friday, April 30, 2004. That brought down the curtain on April 2004.

The May IPO calendar is accented with glitter during the first week of the month. One is the color of money. It is the Greenhill & Co. (NYSE: GHL proposed) IPO. The other is the color of black gold. It is the Atlas America (Nasdaq: ATLS proposed) IPO.

Greenhill & Co. is a New York City-based investment banking firm offering financial advice on mergers, acquisitions, restructurings and similar corporate finance matters. It plans to price 5 million shares at $14 to $16 each to raise $75 million.

Wall Street has always been known as “a people business.” A brokerage firm’s assets go down the elevator every night. This is what Greenhill & Co. is all about.

Mr. Robert F. Greenhill formed the company named after him in 1996. And just who is Mr. Greenhill? He’s an investment banker with a blue-chip pedigree. Before starting his own company, Mr. Greenhill was chairman and chief executive officer of Smith Barney from June 1993 to January 1996.

Before joining Smith Barney, Mr. Greenhill spent 30 years with Morgan Stanley. He was president of Morgan Stanley from January 1991 to June 1993.

During his years at Morgan Stanley, Mr. Greenhill directed the creation of its mergers and acquisition group. He also oversaw the establishment of Morgan Stanley’s private client group.

So what’s the good word about the Greenhill IPO? In this case, it might be wise to follow that star … the investment banking star.

The other sparkling prospect on this week’s IPO calendar is Atlas America. Based in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, Atlas America is an independent energy company developing oil and natural gas. It plans to price its IPO of 2.3 million shares at $14 to $16 each to raise $34.5 million.

The top-performing IPOs this year have been in the energy sector. Crosstex (XTXI: chart) priced its IPO at $19.50 a share on Jan. 12, 2004. The stock closed Friday, April 30, 2004, at $40.93 a share -- up 109.9 percent from its initial offering price.

JED OIL (JDO: chart) priced its IPO at $5.50 a share on April 5, 2004. The stock closed Friday, April 30, 2004, at $10.80 a share -- up 96.4 percent from its initial offering price.

As for Atlas America and how well its IPO might perform, here’s one fact worth keeping in mind. The active June crude oil futures contract settled on Monday at $38.21 a barrel -– a 13-year closing high –- on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The last time that oil hit that level at the market’s close was in October 1990, when Iraqi troops occupied Kuwait.

Let’s take a look back at April 2004.
With Intersection’s pricing, that raised April 2004’s totals to 12 IPOs and the year’s totals to 53 IPOs (including three unit offerings consisting of common stock and warrants.) This time a year ago, only five IPOs had been priced.

The biggest IPO news item last week was Google’s filing to go public. That caught the attention of everybody from Wall Street to Main Street. But Google was only one of 60 companies filing plans for an IPO in April 2004.

Since the start of the year, no fewer than 145 companies have filed IPO plans to raise $26.4 billion. As of May 1, 2004, there were 138 companies in the IPO pipeline looking to raise $32.8 billion.

The IPO Pipeline:
The $1 Billion Club:
Genworth Financial filed proposed offering terms last week to price 145 million shares at $21 to $23 each to raise $3.19 billion. That was the largest IPO in the new-issues pipeline.

Google filed last week to raise $2.7 billion. That was the second-largest IPO in the pipeline.

Freescale Semiconductor is looking to raise $2 billion. That was the third-largest IPO in the pipeline.

The pipeline’s brand names:
Google, of course.
Domino’s Pizza
Republic Airways

The dot-coms are back.
In the IPO pipeline were nine Internet-related IPOs looking to raise $3.53 billion. They were: