Hey, They Got Into This Business to Make Money : Currency: De La Rue, the world’s largest private printer of bank notes, doesn’t mind inflation a bit.

Few businesses take moneymaking as literally as De La Rue.

The world’s largest private currency printer prints money for small countries, generally with fewer than 20 million citizens, that cannot afford to make their own.

It’s enjoying a boom in sales now brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the political reshuffling of Eastern Europe. Most of those countries lack the ability to print money that’s hard to counterfeit, De La Rue’s specialty since the 1850s.

“The breakup of the communist bloc has been quite useful,” said Jeremy Marshall, De La Rue’s chief executive.

De La Rue takes pride in the quality of its bank notes, but it won’t vouch for the value of the money it mass-produces for countries too little or too poor to make their own. The company insists on payment in hard currencies, such as U.S. dollars or British pounds.

The company says little about its currency operations, citing security concerns. But Marshall revealed that De La Rue has seen a 30% increase in business from bank note printing as communism collapsed.

De La Rue is doing even better selling money-sorting machines used by automated tellers, said Tim Rothwell, an analyst who follows the company for the London brokerage Barclays de Zoete Wedd.

Rothwell said he believes that by 1994, De La Rue’s annual pretax profits will jump to $174 million, up 57% from fiscal 1992.

“It’s going well so far and it looks good, but you never know,” Marshall said.

De La Rue won’t say whose money it prints. But a mural of De La Rue bank notes outside the reception desk at the company’s London headquarters offers a few hints: bills from the Philippines, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Uganda and Saudi Arabia.

When De La Rue gets a contract, it designs money using watercolor images of whatever national symbols, dictators or dead heroes the country wants. Artists are careful to include lots of lines and swirls to make counterfeiting a challenge.

De La Rue encourages clients to stay away from pictures of current leaders who could be overthrown or otherwise leave office in a hurry--requiring an entirely new batch of bank notes.

“Living rulers have a shorter shelf life,” Marshall said. “We prefer to have historic figures.”

Besides, once De La Rue has created a bank note, it has a lock on future printings unless the customer goes elsewhere for a new one.

The company uses a fine printing technique--intaglio--making raised ridges that cannot be reproduced on color photocopiers. Other security features such as metal strips can be added.

Countries choose the level of security they want, and pay accordingly.

“There’s some that are less secure,” Marshall acknowledged.

But he points out that it makes little sense to develop a top-of-the-line currency for low-denomination bank notes that are not high on a counterfeiter’s priority list.

Moneymaking is an odd endeavor, giving De La Rue unconventional ways to spot opportunities. Hyperinflation in a client country, for example, terrifies just about everybody but De La Rue.

“It’s very good. Yes, it is,” Marshall said.

The rapid inflation forces countries to either print lots of new money or to add a few zeros onto the denominations. Either way, De La Rue profits by more printing at its plants in England, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malta, Sri Lanka and Kenya.