“The office will study opportunities to invest outside Ukraine. Most likely, we’ll inject certain financial investments and see how it works,” he said in an interview with the Kommentarii weekly, published on Friday.

According to Popov, the office will start work at full capacity early next year with not more than 10 employees. “SCM is not moving to London,” he added.

Popov said that the opening of the London-based office was not connected with possible plans to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) or a private placement.

In his words, SCM and its companies are ready to use that form of the financing of their investment and M&A programs only if they lack own or borrowed funds.

“Generally speaking, all our businesses are ready for an IPO, and we could hold it as soon as within six months. If such need appears in 2013, 2017 or 2020, we’ll do this. But now we have own and borrowed funds,” he said.

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SCM Group comprises Metinvest and DTEK, First Ukrainian International Bank, Renaissance Capital, ASKA and ASKA-Life insurance companies, Vega Telecommunications Group, Ukraina Media Group and Segodnya Multimedia publishing holding, ESTA Holding (real estate), Ukrainskiy Retail (retail), UMG (clay production), Parallel (petroleum products operator), HarvEast (a

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