Morgan Stanley Handles Offerings for AltaVista and HomeGrocer.com

SAN FRANCISCO -- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter sure knows how to cap off a busy week for tech stocks. Two high-profile Internet companies, HomeGrocer.com and AltaVista, filed for initial public offerings after Friday's market close. Guess which bank's name was at the top of both prospectuses?

The timing appears right for both filings. Recent offerings like Akamai (AKAM Quote), VA Linux (LNUX Quote) and FreeMarkets (FMKT Quote) have racked up record or near-record first-day gains. With banks doing their best to get the deals out fast in such a hot market, Morgan Stanley is moving impressively fast.

Also impressive is the amount of capital being raised by both companies. AltaVista, the must-use search engine turned also-ran Web portal, wants to bring in up to $300 million. HomeGrocer, an early entrant in the crowded market for online groceries, wants to raise as much as $250 million.

This isn't the first time that AltaVista has considered bringing itself public. The company, whose search technology was developed in the cubicles of Digital Equipment, first filed in August 1996, just one month after Internet star Yahoo! (YHOO Quote) went public. After withdrawing the offering just seven weeks later, AltaVista became part of Compaq (CPQ Quote) when Compaq scooped up Digital in June 1998. A year later, uber-Net investor CMGI (CMGI Quote) bought a 81% stake in the company. ...