Online personal finance group moneysupermarket.com will decide within the next few days whether to press ahead with a stock market flotation that would value the group at up to £1bn.
The company, which runs price comparison websites for banking and insurance products, has been sounding out advisers on a possible listing for several months.
At a board meeting scheduled for early in the New Year, the company is expected to make a decision on whether or not to proceed.
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Any listing would create paper fortunes of around £400m for the company's two founders, Simon Nixon and Duncan Cameron. A further 16 members of the senior management team have equity in the company.
But the main purpose of a flotation would be to raise funds for an international expansion.
The group is considering expanding into the motor insurance market in Germany, among several other European markets.
Richard Mason, the joint managing director, said: "The option to float still remains open to us. While that now looks more likely than it has in previous years, the board has yet to make a final decision. I would expect us to be able to make an announcement one way or another in the first quarter of the year."
He added: "We're a six-year-old company and a flotation has been a possibility for us for the past few years. But now we've reached a point where we need to look overseas for further expansion opportunities and that will require serious investment."
The company has been valued at between £700m and £1bn. Market observers had originally expected the group to list by the end of the year, after indicating over the summer that an initial public offering could be on the cards.
Although the company has been courted by several investment banks, it has yet to appoint any institution specifically to work on the potential float.
As well as its core financial services products, moneysupermarket.com has now set up price comparison sites handling utility providers and travel deals. The company has been named as one of Britain's fastest growing businesses for three years in a row.
Interest in the sector picked up last year after Lord Milford Haven sold uSwitch, the utility price comparison site, to an American media company for £210m.
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