200-year-old banknote printer De La Rue receives £244m takeover offer

One of Britain’s oldest listed companies faces going private after receiving a £244 million takeover approach from Edi Truell, the serial entrepreneur.

The financier has expanded an earlier partial offer for 40 per cent of De La Rue, the banknote printer, into a full takeover bid pitched at 125p per share.

The company, which was founded in the 1820s and listed on the stock exchange in 1947, confirmed it had received “a preliminary possible conditional cash offer” from Truell’s private companies Disruptive Capital and Pension SuperFund Capital.

The offer is conditional on De La Rue completing the £300 million sale of its authentication division to its New York-listed rival, Crane NXT.

The De La Rue offer follows the £3.6 billion takeover of International Distribution Services, the owner of the centuries-old Royal Mail, by Daniel Kretinsky, the Czech billionaire.

Key to Truell’s interest is a tentative plan for Pension SuperFund to take a role in managing the assets and liabilities of the staff pension scheme, which dwarfs the operating business.

By one measure, the scheme has liabilities of £689 million and a deficit of £50 million, Truell said. Any deal still required the agreement of the scheme trustees.

“The pension fund is key to unlocking this business,” Truell said, describing the trustees as “long-suffering”. They have a senior charge over the business, which gives them first call on the proceeds of asset sales and a veto on dividends.

Truell, a former chief executive of Duke Street Capital, a buyout specialist in the 1990s, has founded or backed a string of ambitious ventures, ranging from Pension Insurance Corporation to a business hoping to tap into Icelandic volcanic energy to power Britain via a 1,000-mile cable.

He said the original partial offer was dropped because De La Rue shareholders wanted a clean break. “They didn’t want some kind of stub equity,” he said. He added that he was confident he would be able to raise the cash to fund a full takeover.

Once listed on the FTSE 100, De La Rue has struggled for years, affected by the shift to cashless transactions and a string of other difficulties, including corruption investigations, quality failings and a deficit-plagued staff pension fund. It also lost the contract to print British passports.

Daniel Kretinsky, the Czech billionaire, bought International Distribution Services, the parent company of Royal Mail, in December

DAVID W CERNY/REUTERS

A key player in any deal will be the activist investor Crystal Amber, which led a revolt that resulted in the appointment of a new chairman, Clive Whiley. It owns a 16.5 per cent stake and has previously said it has a price target for De La Rue of 150p per share.

The board is exploring selling the only remaining asset, the banknote printing business, and said discussions with potential buyers “continue to progress”.

De La Rue shares rose 8.3 per cent, or 8½p, to close at 111p. Under takeover rules, Truell has until February 6 to make a firm bid or walk away.