ALROSA has held informal discussions about a potential initial public offering (IPO,) company spokesman Andrey Polyakov confirmed April 19, 2007.

"ALROSA intends to become a public company. We have had discussions because we want to know the experts' opinions about a future listing, but we are not in official negotiations," he said.

Investment banking sources told Dow Jones Newswires about the discussions Tuesday. They said the talks were at an early and tentative stage and that they could lead to an IPO in the second half of 2007.

Polyakov said that the road to IPO would take longer, however. He said this is because ALROSA operates currently as a close-type joint stock company and must undergo a long judicial procedure to become an open joint stock company before it can proceed with a listing.

Consideration of an IPO has only become possible for ALROSA since a peace deal in December 2006 that saw effective control of the company pass to the federal government from the region of Sakha, also known as Yakutia, in Russia's far east.

That development was followed in February by the appointment of a new chief executive, Sergei Vybornov, who has since been quoted as saying he wants a radical change in the company's strategy.