Poju Zabludowicz's Tamares has about 92,800 square meters of property in Israel

The deal would be in cash and shares, and looks set to be completed within two days. British-Israel will pay Tamares about NIS 171 million, and allocate 16.6% of its shares to Aktive Investment Anstalt, Zabludowicz's company through which he holds Tamares shares.

Tamares has about 92,800 square meters of property in Israel, which are fully rented, including commercial property.

British-Israel owns income-yielding properties in Israel, primarily malls.

Shares in British Israel are up 5.35% this morning on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). In 2008, its share price has fallen 61.3%.

Senior figures in Israel's financial industry fear that a Madoff-style fraud could happen in Israel

The greatest fear is focused on risk capital funds, whose combined assets peaked at about $10 billion. The investment portfolio field is considered to face a very low risk of this type of fraud. The money managed by institutional bodies is well supervised, so the risk there is nonexistent.

Israeli law obligates anyone raising money from the public to report to the Israel Securities Authority and face supervision. Reporting is not required, however, when there are no more than 35 investors, or when the money comes from professional investors such as institutions or wealthy businessmen that the state judges can look after themselves. The second exception covers the entire field of private investment funds, including real estate, hedge and above all, risk capital funds. The upshot is that when it comes to private investment funds, Israel follows the American supervisory model, of a lack of supervision.
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In Israel there are a few dozen private investment funds, which invest mostly in risk capital funds rather than in hedge funds, as in the rest of the world. In the absence of supervision, there is no way to know where this up to $10 billion comes from and who is managing it.

Moody's drops outlook on four Israeli banks to negative

Moody's Investors Service has changed the outlook on the ratings of four Israeli banks to negative from stable: Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank and Mizrahi Tefahot Bank.
The outlook changes have been prompted by Moody's growing concerns over the banks' intrinsic financial strength due to a number of factors, including:
1. Economic conditions in their domicile are increasingly challenging. Growth in Israel is expected to drop from an average rate of 5% for the last five-year period to less than 2% in 2009. Moody's adds that the slowdown could be more severe, depending on the longevity and severity of the international financial and economic crisis.
2. Israeli real estate companies that have expanded globally are affected by the global downturn. Although the majority of the companies have raised funds from the domestic corporate bond market to finance their overseas expansion, any potential problems that such corporations experience would negatively affect the Israeli banks given their exposure to this sector.

Alleged Madoff fraud has worldwide exposure

NEW YORK (AP) — The list of investors who say they were duped in one of Wall Street's biggest Ponzi schemes is growing, snaring some of the world's biggest banking institutions and hedge funds, the super rich and the famous, pensioners and charities.

The alleged victims who sunk cash into veteran Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff's investment pool include real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman, the foundation of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, and a charity of movie director Steven Spielberg, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Among the world's biggest banking institutions, Britain's HSBC Holdings PLC, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Man Group PLC, Spain's Grupo Santander SA, France's BNP Paribas and Japan's Nomura Holdings all reported that they had fallen victim to Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi, or pyramid, scheme.

Prices hold up in well-off Ra'anana

Ra'anana is the city in Israel with the largest concentration of Anglos as a percentage of its population. According to rough estimates some 20 percent of its 73,000 residents originated from English speaking countries or are first generation descendants and therefore speak English as a mother tongue. This includes residents from the US, the UK, South Africa, Australia, Canada and Gibraltar etc. Furthermore Ra'anana has a long standing relationship with North America. Or more to the point with the Jewish community of that counrty.

Ra'anana was founded in 1921 by the Ahuza Alef Society of New York, one of several societies formed in the United States to purchase land in Palestine and establish Jewish agricultural settlements. On April 2, 1922, the first group of pioneers from the US and Canada, consisting of four members of the Ahuza society, three laborers and two armed guards, set out by wagon from Tel Aviv. They set up camp with tents then huts and proceeded to work the land. In its early days, the settlement was called "Raananya." The Arab neighbors called it "Amerikiya" because so many of the early residents spoke English.

Israel real estate prices can collapse

Real Estate Appraisers Association in Israel chairman Erez Cohen predicts a 20% drop in apartment prices nationwide over the coming year, including in high demand areas, unless the government does not immediately address the worsening crisis in housing and infrastructures.

Cohen said, "Immediate and thorough handling of the crisis might prevent this slide, and moderate it to a drop in prices of 4-8%."

We cannot allow a bank failure in Israel

"As we deal with the crisis in the real economy, we need to remember that we haven't reached the bottom of the financial crisis," he said at TheMarker Finance Conference in Tel Aviv.

"We cannot allow a bank failure in Israel," he added. "The economy is small and the contagion could cause the financial system to collapse. Our goal at the Bank of Israel is to preserve all Israeli banks."

Israel's export-oriented economy is girding for a blow from an expected drop in international demand

All told, Israel's 14 largest family-run business groups, measured by revenue, control companies that made up one-fifth of the market value of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange at the end of last year, according to Dun and Bradstreet, a provider of financial information.

Israel's export-oriented economy is girding for a blow. Above, a worker last week at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, which has dropped 47% this year.
Israel's export-oriented economy is girding for a blow. Above, a worker last week at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, which has dropped 47% this year.
Israel's export-oriented economy is girding for a blow. Above, a worker last week at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, which has dropped 47% this year.

Now, high debt and real-estate exposure overseas among several of these moguls is shaking investor confidence.

The benchmark TA-25 index of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the country's only exchange, has fallen 28% since Sept. 30, and is down 47% this year. Israel's Tel-Bond 40 Index of the top corporate bond issues by market capitalization has fallen 21% this year.

Israel Discount Inv raises offer for Property shares

(Reuters) - Israeli holding company Discount Investment Corp said on Monday it was raising its offer to acquire 650,000 shares in Property and Building Corp (PTBL.TA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to 154 shekels a share ($38.6) from 126.

If the offer is accepted by Property and Building shareholders, Discount will book a capital gain of 238 shekels per acquired share for the deduction of negative goodwill resulting from the transaction, Discount said in a statement to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Tel Aviv real estate bubble bursting

Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that due to the situation, the Tel Aviv Municipality is considering a plan to encourage the construction of upscale building projects, in the framework of which it would permit contractors to build 20% more than originally planned, with the additions designated for subsidized housing units for young couples.



Among the frozen construction projects are the luxury towers that were set to be built on the site of the old Elite factory in Ramat-Gan, the three towers that were planned at Tel Aviv's Kikar Hamedina (State's Square) and 12 more towers at the Halacha intersection.



In addition, the tender for the construction of a chic neighborhood on the grounds of the old retailers' market is also expected to be delayed by a few months. Citi Bank, which published the tender, hoped to raise $1.5 billion towards the project, but some of the five groups that qualified for the tender's final stage announced that they wished to reassess the situation due to financial difficulties. The Azorim development firm and Africa Israel both decided to drop out of the tender entirely.

Developer Africa Israel posts steep loss in Q3

Africa Israel posted a net profit of 281 million shekels in the same quarter a year ago.

The company attributed the loss to a 1.9 billion shekel decline in the fair value of a number of properties as well as higher financing costs due to a pick-up in inflation.

A large part of its debt payments are linked to the consumer price index.