Following on from the previous week's announcement that the company is selling its stake in the Swiss currency printing joint venture De La Rue Giori, Mr Much said an arbitration claim relating to the associate had been settled for a fraction of its value. This, he added, was "the last of the legacy issues around De La Rue". As a result, he and his colleagues "can put our energies into growth organic and acquisitions".De La Rue's long-suffering shareholders could be forgiven for thinking they had heard this sort of thing before. In 1994, Jeremy Marshall, the former Hanson manager and BAA chief executive parachuted into the top job in 1989 after Brian Malpass left in the wake of a profits warning, was hailed for saving the old Establishment name from what looked like certain extinction. In the Eighties, the company had diversified from its core business of banknote printing into such diverse areas as electronics and Formica manufacturing. Along the way, Robert Maxwell had acquired 21 per cent of the company and it narrowly avoided being taken over paper group Norton Opax made a bid of £489m, but was forced to abandon the deal when it became the subject of a hostile offer from Bowater.Mr Marshall started well cutting costs and rationalising the business and a group of institutions relieved him of the looming presence of Mr Maxwell by buying out his stake at what was estimated as a £50m loss to the late tycoon.
The new chief executive then set about pursuing growth, paying £95m for Inter Innovation, a Swedish company that fitted with De La Rue's existing payment systems business, raising £160m in a rights issue and acquiring the papermaker Portals for £682m. Then the company took the then risky but ultimately highly profitable measure of investing in the National Lottery provider Camelot.But the City had hardly finished praising Mr Marshall for boosting earnings nearly sevenfold in six years, when the company with a proud history dating from the early years of the 19th century again looked in danger of losing its independence. In 1995, it issued two profits warnings and early the following year Les Cullen, the finance director credited with a leading role in the Portals acquisition, left. Two years later Mr Marshall himself had gone.Analysts believe it is different this time.
Louise Barton, of Investec Henderson Crosthwaite, says while Mr Marshall was unable to follow through on his good early work, Mr Much has shaken up the management, bringing in people with the right sort of experience to cope with the increasingly competitive environment. "He's just sharpened the whole thing up," she adds.A great deal is made of how Mr Much's time running T&N, which, as a car component maker, is in as competitive a business as they come, equipped him with the responsiveness to lead De La Rue into its new phase. But he had also done his homework before taking on a job that could not have looked that attractive.Having led the sale of T&N to Federal Mogul of the US in March 1998, Mr Much was approached by a venture capitalist interested in taking De La Rue private. He made a detailed study, highlighting the problems in the business and concluding that going private could pose a problem in terms of achieving an exit for the venture capital firm, and thought nothing further of it. A short while later he was talking to a headhunter about another chief executive position and with the board taking a while to decide asked about other opportunities. When the headhunter came up with De La Rue he went to meet Brandon Gough, the former chairman of the accountancy firm Coopers & Lybrand who had recently been installed as chairman, and found they agreed on the issues confronting the company. "I knew what I was in for," he says, and "there have been few surprises" since he started work in September 1998.
