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
Charles de la Rue Charles de la Rue Charles de La Rue (3 August 1643, Paris – 27 May 1725, Paris), known in Latin as Carolus Ruaeus, was one of the great orators of the Society of Jesus in France in the seventeenth century He entered the novitiate on 7 September 1659, and being afterwards professor of the humanities and rhetoric, he attracted attention while still young by a poem on the victories of Louis XIV. Pierre Corneille translated it and offered it to the king, saying that his work did not equal the original of the young Jesuit. He wrote several tragedies, published