US agency in £263m takeover bid for Financial institution of England banknote printer

[ad_1] A bidding battle could possibly be heating up for De La Rue, the 200-year-old British agency that prints banknotes for the Financial institution of England, after its board really helpful an all-cash provide from the US buyout agency Atlas Holdings.

De La Rue’s shares climbed by as a lot as 16% on Tuesday morning after the corporate launched a press release to traders saying that its board had really helpful shareholders settle for Atlas’s provide of 130p a share, which valued the corporate at £263m.

The all-cash takeover bid was at a 16% premium to De La Rue’s closing worth on Monday, which the corporate board described as “honest and affordable”.

The Metropolis financier Edi Truell, nevertheless, is reportedly contemplating the next provide of 132.17p a share, which may set off a bidding battle.

Funding funds managed by Truell, a pensions and personal fairness entrepreneur, have made the proposal to De La Rue, as first reported by Sky Information.

The corporate mentioned it had not acquired a agency provide from Truell, and launched an additional assertion in a while Tuesday reaffirming its suggestion of the Atlas provide.

“It could take one thing very vital for the board to make every other resolution proper now, and I don’t see that taking place,” mentioned De La Rue’s chief govt, Clive Vacher.

The Atlas provide would give De La Rue the advantage of backing from a “financially sturdy firm”, he mentioned. “We predict continuity of technique, continuity of administration, continuity of workers, continuity of location and continuity of shoppers.”

The sale to Atlas, which might imply De La Rue delisting from the London Inventory Alternate, can be topic to shareholder approval and regulatory clearance. Vacher mentioned he hoped the deal could possibly be accomplished by early summer season.

The corporate, which is headquartered in Basingstoke, first confirmed in January that it was in takeover talks with Disruptive Capital GP and Pension SuperFund Capital (PSFC), based by Truell.

The cope with PSFC was conditional on the completion of De La Rue’s £300m sale of its authentication division to Crane NXT, which was introduced in October 2024. The corporate expects that sale to finish on 1 Might.

The long-running takeover course of took one other flip in February, when De La Rue launched a proper sale course of after it mentioned it had acquired “preliminary approaches” from multiple potential bidder.

The corporate has confronted a string of challenges, together with a widespread fall in the usage of money, which accelerated throughout the pandemic, and it has issued quite a lot of revenue warnings lately.

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The corporate stopped manufacturing of banknotes and UK passports at its plant in Gateshead in 2020 after it misplaced out on the contract to print post-Brexit blue passports to the Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto.

After the completion of the sale of its authentication enterprise, De La Rue will make use of about 1,250 folks, of whom simply over half are primarily based within the UK.

Atlas has mentioned that as a part of its provide it will lower about 50 jobs on the firm, or 4% of the workforce, primarily in positions associated to being a listed enterprise.

The corporate can hint its historical past again to 1813, when Thomas de la Rue based it as a printing enterprise in Guernsey, earlier than organising in London a decade later promoting straw hats and stationery.

It has a contract with the Financial institution of England to run the central financial institution’s printing facility in Debden, Essex, and was concerned in printing tens of millions of recent banknotes that includes the picture of King Charles earlier than his coronation.