CNBC: How to Invest in Israel

In honor of Israel’s 60th birthday, CNBC aired some impressive segments on life in Israel and about some of Israel’s many accomplishments.
In this segment learn about how you can be a part of Israel’s economic growth. Listen to the experts discuss why you should invest in Israel.

“Land of milk and start-ups”

Here’s how one of the smallest countries in the world manages to have the second most companies listed on NASDAQ, the most engineers per capita of any country, and be a global power house in technology and innovation.

From the ECONOMIST:

Land of milk and start-ups

March 19th 2008 | TEL AVIV
From The Economist print edition

Silicon Wadi v Silicon Valley

IF HIGHWAY 101 south of San Francisco, Silicon Valley’s main artery, were mysteriously to connect to one of the roads around Tel Aviv, many drivers would not even notice. The office blocks with large, tinted windows, housing technology start-ups, are hard to tell apart. Indeed, many people would argue that the world’s second most important technology cluster, called Silicon Wadi (“canyon” or “gorge” in Hebrew), is essentially a clone of the first.

When it comes to entrepreneurial infrastructure, the similarities between the Valley and the Wadi are certainly striking. In both places corporate hierarchies are despised, risk-taking is rewarded and failure tolerated. Israel also boasts several elite universities, such as Technion in Haifa, and research centres run by big technology firms such as Cisco and Intel. Entrepreneurs have their pick of providers if they need legal or other services. And, as in California, there are plenty of well-funded venture-capital (VC) firms providing cash.

Yet there are many differences, too, starting with venture capital. In 2007 VC firms invested $1.76 billion in Israel. Although this was the highest figure since the dotcom bubble burst in 2001, and was up 8.5% on 2006, it is still less than a fifth of the $10 billion or so invested in Silicon Valley. (The figure for Europe was $7.2 billion, down 5% from 2006.) Local funds do more than half of the deals, but almost all the money comes from abroad, mostly from America. And most of it is invested not in software or trendy web-based services, but in start-ups developing specialised chips or advanced telecoms equipment.

Continue reading “Land of milk and start-ups”…

EBAY Purchases Israeli Security

It’s hard to imagine any company attracting more attempted credit card fraud than eBay. Which is why eBay is spending $169 million to acquire Tel Aviv-based Fraud Sciences, developers of software that catches fraudulent transactions with a claimed accuracy rate of 99.9%.

From esecurityplanet.com

“An Entrepreneurial Path to Peace”

From BusinessWeek:

An Entrepreneurial Path to Peace
By providing small businesses with incubators, Israeli industrialist Stef Wertheimer hopes to give Israelis and Arabs economic opportunities that will lead to peace
by Stacy Perman

About five years ago, Stef Wertheimer came across Gamila Hiar, a Druze woman with no formal education who had learned the ancient art of making soap from wild herbs and olive oil as a child. At the time, Hiar was supplementing her family’s income, producing about 500 soap bars a week, from a corner in a room underneath her house in Pqi’in, a village in the Galilee region of northern Israel.

When Wertheimer met Hiar, her soaps had a devoted local following and were referred to as “the magic soaps of Gamila” for their restorative properties. Wertheimer was impressed. “We found that she was an entrepreneur,” says Wertheimer. “She just needed more space to dry her soaps. I asked her if she wanted to come to one of my industrial parks.”

Developing Exports
Hiar, now 68, ended up at Tefen Industrial Park, a bold philanthropic enterprise located about eight miles from the Lebanese border. Wertheimer (BusinessWeek.com, 3/14/08), the founder of Iscar Metalworking, established Tefen in 1985 in order to encourage entrepreneurship in one of Israel’s most undeveloped and low-income regions, with a population split largely between Arabs and Jews. According to Wertheimer, 81, “there are no unemployed, only people who are unlucky to find a job.”

Continue reading “An Entrepreneurial Path to Peace”…

If Our Cup is Full, Then Let it Overflow

Here some news to flex our envirofinanceexportaqua muscles…

From HAARETZ:

Hi-tech Israeli water companies shoot for world market

After decades of developing water technologies aiming to “make the desert bloom”, Israel has shifted focus to selling its products abroad with a goal of doubling exports in the sector to e2 billion by 2010.

From ultra-violet light technology to purify water to a recycling system using millions of small, plastic rings to breed bacteria and break down organic waste, Israeli innovations are finding buyers abroad. If a United Nations goal of improving sanitation by 2015 is to be achieved, the global market would be worth about e10 billion a year.

Daniel Wild, senior analyst at Zurich-based Sustainable Asset Management (SAM), an independent asset management group managing 8.5 billion Swiss francs (e8.3 billion) in assets, said Israeli technology is leading in two main segments — irrigation and desalination — because it was one of the first countries to develop efficient technologies.

“When it comes to water scarcity, Israel had to have a closer look very early,” Wild said.

About two-thirds of Israel is desert, spurring it to become one of the world’s leaders in water recycling. Seventy-five percent of waste water in Israel is re-used, mostly for agriculture, said Oded Distell, director of international investments at the Industry and Trade Ministry.

Soon after Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared in the 1950s that the future of the Jewish state depended on “making the desert bloom”, engineer Simcha Blass teamed up with a kibbutz farming collective in the Negev desert to form Netafim, a company that introduced to the world a water-sparing process known as drip irrigation.

Continue reading If Our Cup is Full, Then Let it Overflow…

Israel’s Technology Creates an Investment Goliath

Donald Snyder
Fox Business

Israel, with fewer than 7 million people, has become a Goliath in the world of technology and medicine.

It is third only to America and Canada in the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq, ahead of economic powerhouses like Germany, England and China.

Israel’s economy is robust, despite a government rife with scandal and an impasse with the Palestinians over the fate of the West Bank and Gaza.

Bruce Aust, executive vice president of Nasdaq , said there are 75 Israeli companies worth a total of $60 billion listed on the Nasdaq ” Israel has very few natural resources, so Israelis have to be very entrepreneurial and innovative to create jobs for its citizens,” Aust said. He indicated that he has heard of numerous cases where three or four people have a great idea that eventually becomes a successful company on the Nasdaq .

Continue reading Israel’s Technology Creates an Investment Goliath…

Delta Launches New Service to Tel Aviv

Just in time for the hot tourism season, Delta Airlines launched its new daily service between Tel Aviv and New York this week. The airline says this new route will add 100,000 seats annually to accommodate for the tourism boom from last year. Israeli airliner El Al also plans to increase its number of weekly flights, creating some healthy competition in the skies. Fly on!

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