De La Rue on March 2005 Sequoia was sold to Smartmatic, a multi-national technology company which had developed advanced election systems, voting machines included. In 2003, the company acquired the Debden-based banknote printing operations of the Bank of England. In 2003 and 2004 the company supplied banknotes to Iraq. The company was recognised by Hermann Simon as a role model for other small- to medium-sized businesses in his book "Hidden Champions". The Highest Perfection, a history of De La Rue was published in 2011. Written by Peter Pugh for De La Rue, it covered the years 1712–2003. In August 2014, the company announced
Rue de la Harpe the sentence of the law, that besides the execution of the monsters upon the rack, the houses in which they perpetrated those infernal deeds, should be pulled down, and that the spot on which they stood should be marked out to posterity with horror and execration." About six years before this story appeared, two houses on the street had been torn down to allow access to the ruins of the Thermes de Cluny. It is suspected this may have fed or sparked the rumor. Rue de la Harpe The rue de la Harpe is a street in Paris' Latin Quarter.