Russia's biggest steelmaker, Evraz Group SA, which completed a major acquisition in the United States at the start of the year, is in talks to acquire Canada's IPSCO Inc., a business daily reported Thursday.

Evraz's management held acquisition talks several weeks ago with IPSCO, the Vedomosti paper said, citing two unnamed businessmen familiar with Evraz's shareholders.

Irina Kibina, vice president at Evraz, declined to comment on the report.

In January, Evraz completed the takeover of Oregon Steel for $2.3 billion, making it one of the largest investments in the United States by a Russian company. Evraz already owns steelworks in the Czech Republic and Italy.

Billionaire Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich holds 41 percent of Evraz's shares.

Andrei Litvin with the MDM investment bank in Moscow said the Canadian deal was "theoretically possible" and called IPSCO an attractive and profitable target that would allow Evraz to diversify geographically and in terms of the products it makes.

However, he said there was a question mark over how Evraz would finance the acquisition of a company with a market value of some $6 billion. Since the Oregon Steel deal, Evraz has the highest debt burden among Russian steel companies.