A UKRAINIAN steel group has taken a significant step towards what is likely to be one of the biggest floats in London this year.

Interpipe, which makes steel pipes and railway wheels, has appointed two nonexecutive directors and recruited banks for the listing, which should raise about $1 billion (£495m) and value the group at between $4 billion and $5 billion.

Nikolai Tsekhomsky, finance director of VTB, the Russian bank, and Jean-Pierre Saltiel, a veteran French financier, will join the board. Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro and Merrill Lynch have been retained to advise on the float, which is expected to take place later this year.

London has become the favoured market for western fund-raisings and listing by former Soviet bloc countries. Metals and mining groups have raised billions over the last two years, and last week ENRC, a Kazakh natural-resources company, entered the FTSE 100 group of elite companies, becoming the 30th-largest quoted company in Britain.

While most of the companies have been from Russia and Kazakhstan, Ukraine is also emerging as a happy hunting ground for the City.

At a conference organised by investment bank Credit Suisse this week, delegates heard that as many as 60 Ukrainian groups could seek UK listings.

Ferrexpo, a metals company, raised $426m last year.

Last week Inter Media Group, Ukraine’s largest media business, said it was planning to use the London markets to raise $500m. Yaroslav Porokh-nyak, the vice-president of Inter Media Group, said it planned to make its London debut next year.

Interpipe, which is owned by Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian businessman, is among the world’s top 10 producers of seamless steel pipes, and the world’s third-largest maker of train wheels. The company is investing £300m in an electric arc furnace to allow it to expand production.

City sources said the recruitment of the two nonexecutives gave a clear signal that Interpipe intended to press ahead with its float despite the turbulence in financial markets.

Gennady Gazin, the chairman of the board of directors, said: “Interpipe is committed to maintaining and enhancing its corporate governance and our intention is to operate in line with the best-practice standards adopted by leading international companies.”

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