Merrill Lynch has scooped a €280m ($246m) mandate from Dixons, the UK electrical retailer, to sell 50m shares in Wanadoo, the French internet company.

The appointment of Merrill to lead the accelerated bookbuild is a surprise, given that Dixons' registered brokers are Cazenove and Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, and that Dixons used Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in March when it first reduced its stake in Wanadoo using an exchangeable.