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 Pompe white villas, except where a railway ran through a deep cutting in the chalk. A train actually roared and panted by, and choked me with its filthy steam as I looked round in stupefaction on the ruins of my long-cherished hope." At what is now a junction of Rue de la Pompe and Rue de Siam, between buildings numbered 43 and 45, there used to stand a hotel of unidentified name. In 1877-1880 it was inhabited by Carlos de Borbón, the Carlist claimant to the throne of Spain, his wife Margarita de Bourbon-Parme, their 5 children and the quasi-court of