Frank Quattrone , is back on the scene. He was involved in some of the biggest IPOs of the dot.com boom--like the Amazon and Netscape IPOs--and then spent a few years on trial for federal charges of obstruction of justice . Now he is running the tech-focused investment bank Qatalyst Partners. And he thinks confidence in the tech sector is starting to come back. But he cautions that the current recovery is going to be very different from the recovery after the dot.com bust. While he says there were, on average, 62 IPOs per year from 2001-2007--following the dot.com bust (there had been nearly 400 IPOs per year in the "crazy years" at the height of the dot.com bubble), the average dropped to 18 over the last two years. The big problem, he says, is the lack of credit. Quattrone spoke about the state of the tech sector at the Wharton School 's San Francisco campus. Here's an excerpt of the discussion: Read more about the panel discussion here .
Filed under: venture capitalists, Amazon, Google Maps, Apple, technology, high tech sector, M&A activity, knowledge at wharton, Netscape, IPOs, Frank Quattrone