A bank from the U.S. to find a buyer of Anywayanyday’s shares

One of the largest Russian tourist Internet services Anywayanyday.com concluded an agreement with the U.S. investment bank Merrill Lynch to conduct a private placement of its shares.

According to Kommersant newspaper, Merrill Lynch received the mandate two months ago. The volume of the impending deal is about $40M. Talks with financial investors, funds that traditionally buy Internet assets, are in progress.

Anywayanyday.com was launched in 2008 on the basis of one of the largest online sellers of air and railway tickets - Avantix.ru. Now the service offers users to purchase tickets from 800 airlines, and provides a booking base of 330K hotels.

According to preliminary data, the whole Anywayanyday service was estimated at $200M in late August, but now the figure will be much higher. The turnover of the service was $192M in 2011. The plan for this year is to bring it up to $400M.

Merrill Lynch is a major U.S. investment bank, which was acquired by Bank of America in 2008, and became its subdivision.