Oleg Deripaska, Russia's richest man, has chosen Hong Kong over London as the market on which to have the initial public offering of copper and molybdenum producer SMR, according to Bloomberg News.

Deripaska, 40, who almost doubled his fortune last year to $40 billion according to Moscow-based Finans Magazine, counts aluminum and auto-making as his biggest sources of income.

Deripaska hopes to benefit from higher valuations for metals companies on Asian stock exchanges than European and North American bourses. Deripaska's United Co. Rusal, the world's biggest aluminum producer, last month said it hadn't decided where to sell shares after the Financial Times reported it may also choose Hong Kong over London.

“We see that currently Hong Kong is offering much better multiples'' on stock valuations, Geoffrey Cowley, SMR’s ceo said today at the CIS Metals Summit in Moscow organized by the Adam Smith Institute, according to a Bloomberg report. The company plans an offering “at the end of the third or beginning of the fourth quarter this year,'' he said.