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
Pierre de la Rue cathedral at Cambrai. Previous biographies of La Rue place him in Siena, Italy, between 1483 and 1485; however, it has been determined that the "La Rue" in the records there was a different singer. Pierre de la Rue probably never went to Italy, making him one of the few prominent Franco-Flemish composers of this generation never to travel there. In 1489 he was paid by the Confraternity of the Illustre Lieve Vrouwe in 's-Hertogenbosch, again as "Peter vander Straten", and the document indicates that he had come from Cologne, so he evidently had spent some time in Germany as a