Despite the somewhat successful debut of Loudcloud on Friday–its stock closed up a bit on a day that the overall markets took a huge beating– most companies are still reluctant to go public in the current Nasdaq and tech bear market.

In fact, so far this year, more than 50 companies have pulled plans to complete their IPO.

On Friday alone, at least six companies cancelled their IPO plans, including:

• Software firm Trinagy Inc., which is backed by Nortel Networks Corp., withdrew its plans to go public due to market conditions. It had hoped to raise as much as $75 million. It also had a pretty impressive list of underwriters, including Bear Stearns, CIBC World Markets, Wit Soundview and C.E. Unterberg Towbin. According to the preliminary prospectus, Nortel has a 12.2 percent stake, equal to 1.5 million common shares.

• Omnicell.com, whose technology helps hospitals and other health care facilities manage their medical supply chains, withdrew a planned IPO of 4 million shares. Omnicell hoped to offer the shares for between $12 and $14 a pop and could have raised as much as $56 million. Its underwriters were also blue-chip, including Deutsche Banc Alex Brown, Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette, Banc of America Securities and U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray.

• StarBand Communications Inc., a provider of high-speed Internet access via satellite and co-founded by Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd., EchoStar Communications Corp. and Microsoft Corp., withdrew plans to go public. It was hoping to raise $287.5 million.

• Hospital operator Iasis Healthcare Corp. postponed its planned offering of 13.35 million shares at $14 to $16 each due to unfavorable market conditions. The company hoped to raise about $185 million. The IPO was being handled by Merrill Lynch, Salomon Smith Barney and other underwriters.

• OMM Inc., which makes all-optical switching subsystems for communications networks, withdrew its planned IPO of 9 million shares. The San Diego-based company gave no reason for the withdrawal in its SEC filing. It had planned to sell the shares at $10 to $12 apiece and expected to raise as much $108 million, which the company planned to use for manufacturing, research and development, working capital and general corporate purposes. The underwriters were Credit Suisse First Boston, Chase H&Q, CIBC World Markets and Dain Rauscher Wessels.

• Motive Communications Inc., provider of e-service software for online customer care, withdrew its planned offering of 5 million shares. It had hoped to price the IPO at between $10 and $12 a pop.

But Spinoffs Are Back in Vogue

IPOs may be dropping like, well, Nasdaq stocks.

However, spinoffs from established companies should attract a lot of attention.

• For example, Nextel Communications Inc. plans to price 60 million shares of its Nextel International Inc. unit, a wireless communications services provider, in an IPO managed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. It is expected to raise $720 million if the shares are sold at the top of the price range. The company will have a suggested market value of $5.1 billion based on 428.1 million common shares outstanding after the IPO.

Of course, the terms of the deal were cut in late February. Nextel initially hoped to raise $819 million.

• Titan Corp.’s Surebeam Corp. unit, a maker of food-pasteurization equipment, plans to sell 6.7 million shares at $10 to $12 apiece in a $73.7 million IPO this week. Merrill Lynch is the lead manager for the offering, which is scheduled to price on Thursday.

• Lucent Technologies Inc.’s Agere Systems unit is expected to price next week.

• Meanwhile, one company that is scheduled to go public this week but is not a spinoff from a larger company is QK Healthcare, a wholesale distributor of health-care products. The Ronkonkoma, N.Y.- based company plans to sell 11 million shares for between $14 and $16 a pop. Lehman Brothers and Salomon Smith Barney are the underwriters.

Judge Gives Go-Ahead to Question Auditors

Let the Cendant investigation begin.

A federal judge denied Ernst & Young’s attempt to delay the questioning of its auditors in a civil suit filed by Cendant Corp.

At the same time, the questioning of Cendant’s top honchos has been delayed until the upcoming criminal trial of former Cendant chairman Walter A. Forbes and former vice chairman E. Kirk Shelton, who are charged with financial fraud.

Cendant’s current management is suing Ernst & Young, alleging that its employees knew of at least part of the fraud taking place and helped to conceal it.

Ernst & Young has countersued, contending that current chairman Henry Silverman withheld critical information that would have led to the uncovering of the fraud a lot earlier.

These suit are separate from the criminal trial.

CMGI Says it’s Still Committed to VC

Has the blowup of CMGI’s stock meant the end of its once-vaunted venture capital operation? Believe it or not, no.

The one-time Wall Street incubator darling Friday said its venture- capital unit—CMGI@Ventures–will continue to provide funding to Internet startups.

CMGI felt compelled to publicly support its VC unit after the Mercury News of San Jose, Calif., reported the unit had frozen all investments in its portfolio companies.

“We expect to continue making follow-on investments in existing portfolio companies successfully executing on their business plans, as well as a select number of new investments which represent promising opportunities for CMGI,” said David Wetherell, chairman and chief executive officer of CMGI, in a wire service report.

A spokeswoman said the company will focus more on its existing portfolio, and that new investments would comprise a smaller percentage of investment activity, according to the published account.

Wetherell said Thursday the company had about $1 billion in cash and cash equivalents.

Today’s Layoff News

• IBM offered 36,000 of its Global Services employees a buyout deal. “We made 36,000 eligible but expect only 3 percent to 4 percent to take advantage, mostly those ready to retire anyway,” a spokesperson was quoted in published reports.

• Cisco Systems Inc. is scaling back the hiring of temporary workers and consultants, and expects to cut its travel budget by about 60 percent, according to a spokeswoman in wire service reports. The company also expects a 5 percent turnover of its work force through “normal involuntary attrition,” the spokeswoman said, referring to the company’s practice of periodically evaluating the bottom 5 percent of its employees.

• Dow Jones & Co. and Excite@Home Corp., citing the current decline in online advertising spending and the challenges of securing further funding, said they will close their Work.com Internet joint venture March 31. The companies said the majority of Work.com’s 113 full-time employees in Redwood City, Calif. and in New York City will be leaving the company later this week. Others will remain for a variety of time periods to assist in the orderly wind-down of the company and its relationships with vendors and partners.

• Catalog retailer Lillian Vernon Corp. said Friday it will cut 40 jobs, or 12 percent of its salaried workforce and take a restructuring charge in response to the slowdown in consumer spending.

• USFreightways Corp. said it planned significant job cuts and expected to miss analysts’ forecasts for the first quarter due to the economic slowdown and bad weather.

Merger Monday

• Britain’s Prudential PLC will acquire American General Corp. for about $26.6 billion in stock. Prudential said it will swap 3.6622 Prudential shares for every one American General share, implying a value of $49.52 per American General share. American General share closed Friday at $38.25.

• Auto parts supplier SPX Corp. has agreed to buy diversified manufacturer United Dominion Industries Ltd. for $954 million in stock. SPX would also assume or refinance $876 million of debt, bringing the total transaction value to $1.83 billion. Under the terms of the deal, United Dominion shareholders would receive 0.2353 of an SPX share for each United Dominion share, or $25 per United Dominion share based on the average closing price of SPX common stock for the five-day period ended Friday, March 9. The purchase price would represent a premium of about 30 percent for United Dominion shareholders.

• Royal Dutch/Shell is pushing ahead with its $1.8 billion hostile bid for U.S. gas producer Barrett Resources, ignoring market suggestions it would need to bid higher.

From the CFO.com “Brief” Case

• For the second time this year, OPEC is prepared to cut oil production when the cartel meets in Vienna on Friday. According to published reports, OPEC may seek to trim supplies between 500,000 and one million barrels a day in an effort to keep prices in the $25-a-barrel range.

• New investments of over $1 trillion will be needed to meet global energy demand during this decade, ExxonMobil chairman Lee Raymond said on Monday. “There is no such thing as ‘energy-free’ economic growth…and meeting the energy needs of 2010 may require over $1 trillion in new investment in exploration and producing facilities over this decade,” Raymond told a gas conference, according to Reuters. He said oil would remain the world’s leading source of energy over the next 20 years but demand for gas would grow even faster, “about 50 percent faster than oil.”

• Spanish Internet company Terra Lycos is still on track to break even in terms of core earnings, or EBITDA, by the end of this year, the chairman of parent company Telefonica was quoted as saying on Monday.