November 6, 2009

Compliments of Anglo Raanana Real Estate

· Ilan Ben-Dov is assembling a dream team of executives for Partner Communications, the mobile services company he bought last week, and so he should, it cost him all of NIS 5.29 billion and that’s a lot of money by anybody’s reckoning but it looks as if he got himself a bargain if the latest figures, just published, are anything to go by.

· And while we’re where the big money is, you might remember that when the world economy was not looking good at all, Mr Nochi Dankner of Koor Industries bought a large bloc of Credit Suisse shares. Well he’s been buying…and selling ever since and Koor has reported NIS 3.2 billion in capital gains from the Swiss Company’s stock, including NIS 251 million that will be recorded in the fourth quarter.

· We are pleased to announce that the our Capital City, Jerusalem’s Mr Mayor, Neil Barkat is fit and well and running in Marathons, having just completed one in New York City. He ran with 15 friends from the army and wasted no time before announcing that Jerusalem will have its own marathon within a year or two that will attract participants from all over the world and will include all of Jerusalem’s unique historic sites, giving a big push to local and international tourism to Jerusalem. And why not we ask?

· The Israel Consumer Confidence Index rose in October 2009 rose by 4.7 points in October to 98.3 points (baseline 100 - 1996) to reach a high point not seen in nearly a decade. How about this. As best as can be judged, the pace of improvement in the Israel Consumer Confidence Index is the fastest among developed countries. The percentage of people polled planning to purchase durable goods also rose in October, after remaining unchanged for three months. These findings imply a pick-up in demand by households in the coming months.

· And the rains came, with a vengeance, and apart from the inevitable damage from flooding, that is really GN. The Water Authority said yesterday that the Hermon region was the part of the country that saw the most rain between Friday and yesterday [Wednesday] with 40 million cubic meters of water heading toward two Jordan River tributaries. The flow of water in a third tributary, the Shanir stream, increased 20-fold in the last few days, setting a record for the strongest flow in 23 years, that’s right 23. The water level in the Kinneret, that’s the Sea of Galilee, folks, rose by 8.5 centimeters [3½ inches] over the last few days. The recent rainfall constitutes 35 percent of the average annual rainfall in the western Galilee. The rest of the country got its fair share too and the first snow of the winter, earlier than usual, fell on the Hermon. All in all a really good start and long may it last.

· NICE Systems Ltd. has won a deal with a major global bank to standardize the bank’s anti-fraud systems. No exact figures given but the deal is said to be worth in the “high seven digits”. The packaged solutions will enable the bank to prevent fraud in real-time, in its Internet systems, call centers, credit cards, payments and ATMs. The platform will also assist in the development of anti-fraud models by the bank’s internal experts and that’s not all, the bank will use its enterprise case management solution to manage fraud investigations across the enterprise. Should pay for itself within days! And yet more, the Company announced yesterday [Wednesday] that the Chongqing Metro, the first monorail system in China, in Szechuan Province has selected their digital video security solution for 18 stations to protect passengers against crime and potential threats. Not finished, the order book backlog has reached an all-time record high and the GN doesn’t get much better than that.

· Yet another Israeli cinematic success. Ajami, the film won the Golden Antigone prize on Saturday at the CineMed Mediterranean Film Festival held in Montpellier. Alongside a cash prize of 15,000 euros (about $22,200) given to the film’s creators, 30,000 euros (about $44,400) will be dedicated to distributing the film in France. Another 2,500 euros (about $3,700) will be invested in subtitles. A total of over $80 000 and that’s before it starts totting up fortunes at the box office. Ajami contended in the Montpellier competitions against 12 other films from Italy, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Slovenia, Serbia, Spain, Croatia, and Syria and beat them all. Nice, very nice.

· A joint venture of Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) and Rheinmetall Defence AG has signed a contract with the German army, the Bundeswehr, for the supply of the IAI Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and ground stations for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance [ISR] missions. IAI declined to state the value of the deal, but defense industry sources estimate it at $70-90 million, and believe that follow-on orders are likely. The Military will lease the UAV system for one year with an option for a two year-extension. The Canadian, Australian and French armies already use the Heron as one of their main ISR sources in Afghanistan. IAI said that its Searcher UAV is used by Spanish troops in Afghanistan. Is this the combat shape of things to come, unmanned warfare? Could be, could just be.

· Cyprus, like Israel has a water problem, they don’t have enough of the stuff so an agreement was signed in Israel on Friday between the Government of the Republic of Cyprus and the Israeli Water Company, Mekorot or at least its international arm, for the construction of a desalination plant in the area of Limassol that will provide 40,000 cubic meters of desalinated water per day to start, with the provision to expand to 60,000 cubic meters a day. The contract is Build, Operate and Transfer [BOT], which means that the Israelis will build it, operate it for twenty years and then transfer it to the Cypriot Government. The expected cost to Mekorot’s account is €50m and the revenue over the operating period will be €260 m. We share our know how and expertise with them and they share their money with us. Sounds like a fair exchange.

· We reported on the increase in Israeli exports in last weeks GN but there is one that we omitted to mention, simply because we didn’t know about it. So let us correct our oversight immediately. The Ramat Gan Safari Park, just like Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo, has a highly successful breeding program, which is fine, contented animals tend to multiply so it speaks volumes for the expertise of the caregivers but when said birth rate applies to hippopotamuses – or is it hippopotami? Probably not, they do take up rather a lot of space and they also consume a huge quantity of food and right now there are forty of them disporting themselves in the lake provided. The solution – hippo exports, far and wide by sea and air, including Vietnam, Taiwan and points west with zoos queuing up to buy and they don’t come cheap either. Is it profitable? They’re not saying. Blue and White hippos made in Israel. What next?