The company which prints banknotes for the Bank of England is on the brink of an historic takeover that would see it owned by private equity investors for the first time since it was founded 212 years ago.
Sky News has learnt that Atlas Holdings, a US-based buyout firm, is in advanced talks about a 130p-a-share offer for De La Rue.
The London-listed company’s leading investors are understood to have been asked to provide irrevocable undertakings to accept the offer, with one shareholder saying that a deal recommended by De La Rue’s board was likely to be announced as early as Tuesday morning.
If completed, a takeover deal would end nearly 80 years of De La Rue’s status as a London Stock Exchange-listed business, having made its public company debut in 1947.
Headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, Atlas Holdings focuses on acquiring companies in sectors such as industrials, trading and energy.
Among the businesses it owns in Europe are London-based graphic and creative services agency ASG and Bovis, a British construction services group.
Banking sources said the 130p-a-share offer for De La Rue would represent a robust premium to a price which sank below 50p in mid-2023, but which has since recovered to close at 112p on Monday evening.
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Atlas Holdings is understood to have drafted in bankers from Lazard to advise it, while De La Rue is being advised by Deutsche Numis.
The offer from Atlas Holdings does not include De La Rue’s authentication division, which is being sold to US-listed Crane NXT in a £300m transaction which took a further step towards completion last week.
The proceeds from that deal have been earmarked to repay loans and reduce its pension scheme deficit.
De La Rue’s currency arm prints money for a large number of central banks around the world, including in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe.
It has printing sites in the UK, Kenya, Malta and Sri Lanka.
In 2020, the Bank of England announced that it had extended De La Rue’s contract from the end of 2025 until 2028.
At the time, there were 4.4bn Bank of England notes in circulation with a collective value of about £82bn.
De La Rue has been running a formal sale process under Takeover Panel rules, with a string of parties said to have expressed an interest in it since the period began late last year.
Among its potential suitors has been Edi Truell, the prominent City financier and pensions entrepreneur, who tabled a 125p-a-share proposal in January.
De La Rue’s directors have been exploring options in recent months to maximise value for long-suffering shareholders, including a standalone sale of the currency-printing business or other proposals to acquire the entire company.
The group’s balance sheet has been under strain for years, with doubts at one point about whether it could stave off insolvency.
After being beset by a series of corporate mishaps, including a string of profit warnings, a public row with its auditor and challenges in its operations in countries including India and Kenya, it was forced to seek breathing space from pension trustees by deferring tens of millions of pounds of payments into its retirement scheme.
Soon after that, the company parachuted in Clive Whiley, a seasoned corporate troubleshooter, as chairman, with a mandate to repair its battered finances.
Since then, its stock has recovered strongly, and is up 37% over the last year.
De La Rue traces its roots back to 1813, when Thomas De La Rue established a printing business.
Eight years later, he began producing straw hats and then moved into printing stationery, according to an official history of the company.
Its first paper money was produced for the government of Mauritius in 1860, and in 1914 it began printing 10-shilling notes for the UK government on the outbreak of the First World War.
De la Rue has been contacted for comment, while Atlas Holdings could not be reached for comment on Monday evening.
