Banknotes in News

An ATM was recently installed in London s East End to become the first ever in the UK to issue 5-pound banknotes only. According to Bank Machine Ltd. officials, by taking this step the company would like to encourage the people of the misty Albion to use 5-pound banknotes more actively.

On 19 August 2008 one of the oldest world mints in Kremnica started the production of Slovakian euro coins which commenced country s transition to the European currency that officially will occur on 1 January 2009. Slovakia will become the 16th Eurozone country.

The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to print various notes of the Ethiopian Birr to Giesecke & Devrient GmbH (Germany) and De La Rue (UK).
NBE announced an international tender in May 2008, inviting currency printers to print a total of a little over ETB 1.1 billion in all denominations of the Birr. Five out of six most reputed firms that have bought the tender documents have responded. This included German Giesecke & Devrient GmbH, British De La Rue, Canadian Bank Notes and French Francois-Charles Oberthur Fiduciarie (FCOF).

The Second International Contest «Coin Constellation - 2008» was held in St. Petersburg during the First European conference «COINS-2008» organized by the Russian publishing house «Water Mark». 80 commemorative and jubilee coins were submitted for the competition, while in 2007 there were only 47 coins to choose from.

On 10 July 2008 the Bank of China's Hong Kong (BOCHK) Branch, probably not willing to leg behind their mainland colleagues from China declared the issuance of four million banknotes with a face value of 10 Dollars in commemoration of the XXIX Olympic Games to be held in Beijing this August.