Less than three months after upgrading Property & Building from Neutral to Buy, I.B.I. backtracked. The Tel Aviv investment firm downgraded the IDB group company from Buy, back to Neutral. Equity analyst Shai Lipman also slashed the company's 12-month price target by a cool 58% because of the meltdown in the financial and real estate markets.
The main yoke on Property & Building's neck is its activity in Las Vegas, Lipman writes in a review titled "The real estate market - the crisis moves from share prices to the real world." In Vegas, Property & Building is involved in projects that range from housing to the grandiose Plaza Hotel. There, the company has linked arms with Yitzhak Tshuva's privately owned company Elad (named after his son), to build a grandiose casino-hotel complex costing billions. Of dollars, not shekels.
