Show me an example Israel Real Estate News: March 2012

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Another Tack: Learning to love the bomb

The upside to an Iranian missile onslaught on Israel is that it would facilitate new real estate projects on the crammed Coastal Plain and render obstructed sea vistas visible again. Increasingly, such morbid predictions of Tehran-initiated mega-scale land clearances in central Israel crop up in casual conversation.

Pent-up angst is vented via macabre gallows humor which presupposes that our dreadful end is inevitable, that by summertime we’d be flattened by Iranian rockets. We paint ourselves as pitiable pawns in the hands of trigger-happy leaders, as wretched victims of the unrestrained hubris and folly of demented higher-ups.

To hear some of what’s proffered by left-wing gurus and commentators, we’re now living though a terrifying real-life reenactment of Dr.Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Stanley Kubrik’s 1964 black comedy spotlighted a loony general who ignites a nuclear apocalypse that a coterie of bungling politicians and frantic generals fail to stop.

Friday, March 30, 2012

CORRECT: Israel Gazit-Globe Profits Down On Weaker Shekel

JERUSALEM (Dow Jones)--Israeli real-estate company Gazit-Globe Ltd. (GLOB.TV) said Wednesday its net profit for the fourth quarter was slightly down at 223 million shekels ($60.3 million), compared with ILS226 million in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Rental revenue rose 18% to ILS1.39 billion from ILS1.18 billion, but a weaker shekel weighed on profit.

For the year as a whole net profit was ILS626 million, compared with ILS790 million, with annual rental revenue at ILS5.24 billion, up from ILS4.6 billion.

The company also attributed the lower annual profit to a weaker shekel. The company said it expects more growth in 2012 as it was able to make many investments in 2011, lower its debt and carry out an American initial public offering to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shay Lipman, analyst at Israel Brokerage and Investments, a local investment house, said the company's performance in 2011 paves the way for continued growth and improvement in 2012.

In his report, Lipman raised the target price of Gazit Globe's shares to ILS55. Gazit Globe is a real-estate company operating in Israel, Europe and North America.

At 0930 GMT, shares of Gazit Globe were down ILS0.03, or 0.08%, at ILS39.06, in a higher Tel Aviv market.