Surging overseas investment in Israel defy global downtrend

By Yoram Ettinger
Straight from the Jerusalem Cloakroom #215, October 27, 2016

1. According to KPMG, one of the four largest global auditing firms, Israel has become a leading hothouse for FinTech companies. 9 out of 100 globally-promising FinTech companies are from Israel, an improvement from 8/100 in 2015. One of the Israeli companies, Payoneer digital payments company, raised $180MN on Oct. 6 in a round led by the Silicon Valley-based Technology Crossover Ventures and the Bala Cynwyd, PA-based Susquehanna Growth Equity (Globes Business Daily, Oct. 27, 2016).

2. In defiance of the global financial downtrend – but as a derivative of Israel’s cutting-edge technologies – Israeli hightech companies raised $1.19BN during Q3 2016, the second highest quarterly amount in ten years. During the first nine months of 2016, Israeli hightech companies raised $4BN, 27% above the $3.15BN raised during the first nine months of 2015. However, the third quarter of 2016 has recorded a 24% decline compared with the third quarter of 2015, although the total for September was higher than August (Globes, October 26).

3. Boston Scientifics acquired Israel’s EndoChoice for $210MN (Globes, September 28). Israel’s Ormat Technologies concluded a senior-unsecured-bonds tender for $204MN (Globes, September 11). The NY-based $14BN CA Technologies acquired Israel’s BlazeMeter for $100MN, CA’s 13th Israeli acquisition (Globes, September 22).

4. The $3BN US cyber giant, ProofPoint, acquired Israel’s FireLayers for $55MN, which has become the research and development center of ProofPiont. FireLayers is the third startup developed and sold by its two co-owners (Globes, Oct. 26). eBay acquired Israel’s Corrigon for $30MN, eBay’s 6th Israeli acquisition (Globes, Oct. 7). The Lexington, MA and Dublin, Ireland-based, Shire, a biopharmaceuticals giant, extends its strategic partnership with Israel’s plasma-derived protein therapeutics company, Kamada, which is expected to yield a minimum of $237MN in revenues during 2017-2020 (Globes, Oct. 7).

5. According to Forbes, September 22 issue: “Since 2011, there has been a 50% year-on-year growth of Chinese investment in Israel…. The business relations between Israel and China is growing…. For example, Li-Ka-Shing, the Hong-Kong-based tycoon, has invested – privately and via his venture capital fund, Horizon Ventures – in 30 Israeli companies. China’s $3BN Neusoft IT co-established a $250MN investment fund with Israel’s Infinity Capital Equity Fund, targeting Israeli digital pharmaceutical equipment companies (Globes, September 26). Baidu, the Chinese Internet giant partnered with Israel’s Carmel investment fund, invested in three Israeli companies and opened an office in Israel. China’s Innovative Medical invested $30MN in Israel’s Pluristem (Globes, October 26). About $15BN have been invested in Israel, by Chinese giant companies such as ChemCina (acquired Adama, a crop protection company, for $3.7BN), Bright Food (acquired Tnuva, a dairy producer, for $2.5BN), Fosun (acquired Ahava, a cosmetic producer, for $77MN), Shanghai Giant Network Technology, Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma and additional Chinese investors (acquired Playtika, an online company, for $4.4BN), etc.

October 28, 2016 | 5 Comments »

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  2. @ stevenl:
    From “Look Back Mrs. Lot” (1965) by Ephraim Kishon quoted in Baedeker’s Israel, U.S. and Canadian edition. 1993. Chapter entitled, “Quotations”. pp. 88-89:

    “The History of Tel Aviv, too, is quite notable. It dates back only fifty years. Once upon a time, fifty years ago, there were two Jews in a desolate sandy waste. One of them gave it as his opinion that no human being could live there. The other maintained that where there was a will there was a way. They made a bet on it. And so Tel Aviv was founded.

    ‘Conditions were so wretched, however, that for a very long time no one settled there. Those who tried were soon driven away by the infernal heat and scattered in all directions. Even the handful of jews who felt compelled, for reasons that were not always clear, to build their miserable shacks on the site and carry on their questionable businesses there fled to more hospitable regions when circumstances permitted.

    ‘ Tel Aviv came into being without any planning but with a great deal of noise. When the population rose to 15,000 the noise was so great that 5000 of them made good their escape.

    ‘ The lack of planning had increasingly distressing effects. The streets, laid out with a population of 10,000 in view, were much too cramped to allow even a semi-satisfactory flow of traffic for 50,000 people. As a result, even the greatest optimists despaired of the future of Tel Aviv. And certainly the dismal and unsightly town had a depressing effect on its 100,000 inhabitants, not least because of the almost complete absence of open spaces. When it is considered too, that the town had only inadequate rudiments of a drainage system, so that when it rained, whole districts were under water, it is easy to understand why the population never rose above 150,000. Tel Aviv, we must regretfully admit, is not an attractive town. How many Jews can we expect to live in an intolerably overcrowded huddle of houses in catastrophic housing conditions? Well, how many? 250,000? All right; but that is the absolute maximum.

    ‘ I am no grumbler, I assure you, but I cannot help wondering how it is possible for a city of 400,000 inhabitants to have no zoo and to do practically nothing else for its children. Why, for example, is there no decent bathing station? Why are there no nice places where people can enjoy a day in the country? These are not trifling questions: the justified complaints of 700,000 Jews are no trifle.

    ‘It is high time the city fathers did something about these things. Otherwise, it will be at least 3 years before the population of Tel Aviv reaches the million mark…”

    stevenl Said:

    My litmus test is: HOW DOES ALL THIS BENEFIT THE AVERAGE JEW in Israel???
    IL is in term of poverty (matter of definition of course) one of the worst in the OECD

    “Ephraim Kishon (help·info) (Hebrew: ????? ???????, August 23, 1924 – January 29, 2005) was an Israeli author, dramatist, screenwriter, and Oscar-nominated film director. He was one of the most widely read contemporary satirists in the world.[1][2][3]…

    “Awards[edit]
    In 1953, Kishon won the Nordau Prize for Literature;
    In 1958, he won the Sokolov Prize for Journalism;
    In 1964, he won the Kinor David Prize;
    In 1998, he was the co-recipient (jointly with Nurit Guvrin and Aryeh Sivan) of the Bialik Prize for literature;[11]

    ‘In 2002, he was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement & special contribution to society and the State of Israel.[12][13]

    Upon receiving the prize, he remarked: “I’ve won the Israel Prize, even though I’m pro-Israel. It’s almost like a state pardon. They usually give it to one of those liberals who love the Palestinians and hate the settlers.”

    ‘Kishon was nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and three times for a Golden Globe Award. He won two Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film Awards, for Sallah Shabati (1964), and The Policeman (1971)’.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_Kishon
    https://www.amazon.com/Look-Back-Mrs-Ephraim-Kishon/dp/014002168X

  3. My litmus test is: HOW DOES ALL THIS BENEFIT THE AVERAGE JEW in Israel???
    IL is in term of poverty (matter of definition of course) one of the worst in the OECD!
    AS long as certain groups are allowed NOT to work, this problem will continue to damage the future of the country. And of course that is for some of these groups the exact purpose.