The City financier Edi Truell has presented a new proposal to acquire De La Rue, the Bank of England’s currency printer, sparking hopes of a wider bidding war for the 211-year-old company. Sky News has learned that Mr. Truell’s entity, Pension SuperFund Capital, reached out to De La Rue’s board on Monday night expressing its readiness to offer 132.17p per share for the company. If officially confirmed, this would exceed the recommended 130p per share bid from private equity firm Atlas Holdings, which was revealed by Sky News and verified by De La Rue in a statement on Tuesday morning. The Atlas bid places De La Rue’s value at around £263m. The source of Mr. Truell’s financing for the bid remains unclear, but this latest proposal follows a 125p per share offer made in January.
De La Rue, a company listed in London since 1947, has been engaged in a formal sale process for several months. The bid from Atlas Holdings does not encompass De La Rue’s authentication division, which is in the process of being sold to US-listed Crane NXT in a £300m deal that recently progressed towards completion. The funds from this transaction are earmarked to repay debts and reduce the company’s pension scheme deficit. De La Rue’s currency division prints money for numerous central banks globally, including in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe. The company operates printing facilities in the UK, Kenya, Malta, and Sri Lanka. In 2020, the Bank of England extended De La Rue’s contract from the end of 2025 to 2028. At that time, there were 4.4 billion Bank of England notes in circulation with a combined value of approximately £82bn.
The directors of De La Rue have been exploring various options in recent months to maximize value for shareholders, including selling the currency-printing business independently or considering offers to acquire the entire company. The company’s financial position has been strained for years, with concerns at one point about its potential insolvency. Following a series of corporate setbacks, including profit warnings, a public dispute with its auditor, and operational challenges in countries like India and Kenya, De La Rue sought relief from pension trustees by deferring tens of millions of pounds of payments into its pension scheme.
Subsequently, Clive Whiley, an experienced corporate problem-solver, was appointed as chairman with a mandate to rectify the company’s financial woes. Since then, De La Rue’s stock has rebounded significantly, with its shares rising by almost 15% on Tuesday following confirmation of Atlas Holdings’ bid. De La Rue can trace its origins back to 1813 when Thomas De La Rue established a printing business. In 1860, the company produced its first paper money for the government of Mauritius. By 1914, De La Rue began printing 10-shilling notes for the UK government at the outset of the First World War.
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