Carlyle cashes in with £650m sale of Talaris
PRIVATE equity house Carlyle Group provided a ray of light for the buyout industry yesterday when it agreed to sell cash-counting equipment firm Talaris to a Japanese rival for £650m.
Glory, Japan’s largest money-handling machine maker, has agreed to buy Talaris in its largest acquisition so far. It marks a quick exit for Carlyle, which bought the Basingstoke firm, then known as De La Rue Cash Systems, for £360m in September 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.
Since then the US group has re-named the business and grown it by entering new markets such as Brazil. Talaris aims to achieve a profit before tax, interest, depreciation and amortisation of £73m for the year ending in March, compared to £55m in the year just before it was bought by Carlyle.
Andrew Burgess, Carlyle managing director, said: “Talaris is an outstanding example of a company that delivers strong growth through innovation and excellence in execution. In 2008, we were confident in the continued popular use of cash and subsequent increased global demand for efficient cash handling solutions by financial institutions.”
Burgess previously led Carlyle’s team on the £1bn acquisition of roadside rescue firm RAC from Aviva last year.
Glory will use cash and bank loans to pay for the Talaris acquisition. Japanese companies typically have higher cash reserves than their overseas rivals.
The deal gives it a greater international reach because of Talaris’ global distribution and maintenance service network and a large customer base.
Hirokazu Onoe, president of Glory, said: “Talaris has demonstrated strong performance in recent years despite the challenging market environment.”
Japanese companies’ cash pile amounted to 5.8 per cent of GDP in the third quarter of 2011, compared with 2.7 per cent in the US and one per cent in Europe, according to UBS Securities.