The City financier Edi Truell has tabled a fresh proposal to buy De La Rue, the Bank of England’s currency printer, fuelling hopes of a broader bidding war for the 211-year-old company.
Sky News has learnt that Mr Truell’s vehicle, Pension SuperFund Capital, wrote to the board of De La Rue on Monday night to indicate its willingness to offer 132.17p-a-share for De La Rue.
If formally confirmed, that would trump a recommended 130p-a-share offer from private equity firm Atlas Holdings disclosed by Sky News and confirmed by the London-listed company in a statement on Tuesday morning.
The Atlas bid values De La Rue at about £263m.
It was unclear where Mr Truell’s financing for a bid was being obtained, but his latest proposal follows a 125p-a-share proposal tabled in January.
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Mr Truell declined to comment when contacted by Sky News.
De La Rue, which has been listed in London since 1947, has been conducting a formal sale process for several months.
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 debt 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’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…
