The Metropolis financier Edi Truell has tabled a contemporary proposal to purchase De La Rue, the Financial institution of England’s foreign money printer, fuelling hopes of a broader bidding battle for the 211-year-old firm.
The Atlas bid values De La Rue at about £263m.
It was unclear the place Mr Truell’s financing for a bid was being obtained, however his newest proposal follows a 125p-a-share proposal tabled in January.
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De La Rue, which has been listed in London since 1947, has been conducting a proper sale course of for a number of months.
The supply from Atlas Holdings doesn’t embrace De La Rue’s authentication division, which is being bought to US-listed Crane NXT in a £300m transaction, which took an additional step in direction of completion final week.
The proceeds from that deal have been earmarked to repay debt and cut back its pension scheme deficit.
De La Rue’s foreign money arm prints cash for a lot of central banks world wide, together with within the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe.
It has printing websites within the UK, Kenya, Malta and Sri Lanka.
In 2020, the Financial institution of England introduced that it had prolonged De La Rue’s contract from the tip of 2025 till 2028.
On the time, there have been 4.4bn Financial institution of England notes in circulation with a collective worth of about £82bn.
De La Rue’s administrators have been exploring choices in current months to maximise worth for long-suffering shareholders, together with a standalone sale of the currency-printing enterprise or different proposals to accumulate the whole firm.
The group’s steadiness sheet has been below pressure for years, with doubts at one level about whether or not it may stave off insolvency.
After being beset by a sequence of company mishaps, together with a string of revenue warnings, a public row with its auditor and challenges in its operations in nations together with India and Kenya, it was compelled to hunt respiration area from pension trustees by deferring tens of tens of millions of kilos of funds into its retirement scheme.
Quickly after that, the corporate parachuted in Clive Whiley, a seasoned company troubleshooter, as chairman, with a mandate to restore its battered funds.
Since then, its inventory has recovered strongly, with its shares up almost 15% on Tuesday after affirmation of Atlas Holdings’ bid.
De La Rue traces its roots again to 1813, when Thomas De La Rue established a printing enterprise.
Eight years later, he started producing straw hats after which moved into printing stationery, in response to an official historical past of the corporate.
Its first paper cash was produced for the federal government of Mauritius in 1860, and in 1914, it started printing 10-shilling notes for the UK authorities on the outbreak of the First World Struggle.
