Glory of Japan to Buy Carlyle’s Talaris for $1 Billion

By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED

Peter Foley/Bloomberg NewsDavid M. Rubenstein, managing director of the Carlyle Group.

Japan’s Glory said on Tuesday that it had offered to buy Talaris, a maker of cash handling and automated teller machine equipment, from the Carlyle Group for £650 million ($1 billion).

It is the latest private equity exit, as firms look to make profits for investors by selling off their portfolio companies, either through a sale or an initial public offering. The deal will allow Carlyle to exit one of its more successful investments in recent years, and could help increase the appeal of the buyout firm as it prepares to go public.

Carlyle formed the company in 2008 when it bought the cash systems unit of De La Rue for about $566 million. The buyout giant renamed its new investment Talaris, after the sandals worn by the Greek god Hermes. Based in Basingstoke, England, Talaris’s predecessor was one of the first companies to sell the automated cash dispensers used in banks.

Since acquiring the company, Carlyle has focused on expanding Talaris’s footprint around the world, and it now has offices in 20 countries. Among those new business areas is Brazil, where a Carlyle partner, Banco de New Zealand, has become one of Talaris’s most recent clients.

Carlyle said in a statement that Talaris’s earnings had jumped more than 40 percent since the leveraged buyout. The company has 1,900 employees.

Glory, based in Himeji, Japan, is looking to capitalize on Talaris’s global growth. The   Japanese company earned 3.6 billion yen ($46 million) in its third quarter last year, atop $1.4 billion in net sales. The company has about 6,000 employees and does business in more than 80 countries.

“Carlyle’s sector expertise and global platform have been invaluable to the company and fundamental to the growth and success we have enjoyed,” Tim Robinson, Talaris’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We are excited about the potential partnership with Glory, which we believe will enhance our combined offerings, underscoring our continued commitment to delivering excellence in customer service.”

Glory said that it planned to pay for the deal with cash on hand and bank financing.

Carlyle was advised by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the law firm Clifford Chance, while Glory was advised by KPMG and the law firm Slaughter & May.