StepStone has certainly found its path to success easy in the euphoria surrounding internet stocks with the announcement of its £2.41 a share flotation price hitting the top end of expectations yesterday.

The Norwegian online recruitment firm, which begins officially trading on the London and Oslo markets on March 14, last week had to nudge up its offer range from between 152p and 190p to 205p and 243p in response to the strong investor demand.

British investors have been allocated 5.9m shares with a parcel of 200 each, while 1.5m shares go to Norwegians.

Spread betting firms expect StepStone to soar as high as 480p to 490p. Fred Tulloch, marketing manager at Financial Spreads, said the demand for internet firms continued to amaze the company, which had underestimated its bets on StepStone and Interactive Investor International.

The offer of only 54m StepStone shares, which will raise £121m, is understood to have been at least 20 times oversubscribed with one institutional investor asking for 10%.

StepStone will be capitalised initially at £514m and intends to use the funds to expand across Europe. Giles Clarke, chief executive of StepStone, said the strategy is to be the leading online recruitment and career portal by snatching more employment listings, customer advertising and CV listings.

Mr Clarke who took the helm last September owns about 5% of the company. StepStone boasts clients including Nokia, Andersen Consulting, Coca-Cola and Pizza Hut.

However, losses at StepStone, founded in 1996, have leapt from €300,000 in 1997 to €24.2m (£15m) last year. It operates in Britain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Belgium and Italy, and claims that it is the market leader by revenue. Turnover in 1999 was £7m.

It says it has about 1.7m job-seeker profiles in its database and that it is used by more than 10,000 companies.