Gartmore's initial public offering, which has just been scheduled for next month, could give the UK fund manager a market capitalisation of £900m (€1bn) in a flotation that has been described by its chief executive Jeff Meyer as "opportunistic".

Meyer told Financial News the partial flotation aims to raise £250m, allowing Gartmore to reduce its net debt from £400m to £150m. The company has not disclosed the percentage of its total shares it plans to issue in return for this amount of money.