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Tycoon Yitzchak Tshuva Sells Off Part of His $4B Fortune

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Yitzchak Tshuva’s Delek Group said it is unloading a majority holding in the Phoenix Insurance Company to Fosun International, a conglomerate from China

It was recently announced that another mega business transaction between Israel and China was in the works and this time entrepreneurial titan Yitzchak Tshuva is playing a major role.

Tshuva’s Delek Group said it is unloading a majority holding in the Phoenix Insurance Company to Fosun International, a conglomerate from China, according to a report in The Times of Israel. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange put out a statement saying that Fosun’s plan was to buy 52.31% of Phoenix for a total of $471 million.

Just last week, yet another Israel-China mega-deal was completed when the Chinese owned XIO Group bought out Lumenis, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of medical laser technology, and a company that happens to be based in Israel. The Times of Israel reported that “the deal was estimated at $510 million, at least 16% more than the Lumenis shares were worth on the NASDAQ exchange.”

Industry insiders say that the Delek deal came as no surprise since Delek has been busy selling off assets to comply with new laws on the size of conglomerates, according to the Times of Israel report.

Currently, Delek owns about 25% of shares in gas fields off the coast of Israel along with assets in the Israeli economy that are related to the energy business.

The report indicates that Delek was required to sell off assets because of legislation that was passed in the Knesset in 2013 that places a mandate on large financial complexes to do just that to encourage competition in a burgeoning capitalist society.

The Knesset had Tshuva in mind when pushing for the passage of the legislation as he is worth approximately $4 billion and is the majority owner of Delek.  In addition to the deal with Fosun, over the last year ro so, Delek has sold portions of its operations in Europe and the United States to investment firms.

This is also not the first deal that Fosun has done with Israel. In 2013, they purchased Alma Lasers, an Israeli health firm and in 2014, they bought Check-Cap Pharmaceuticals.

The Phoenix Insurance Company operates in Israel, Europe and the United States but it appears that its unionized employees are not at all happy about the Delek deal. They called a strike upon receiving the news of the deal and have boldly insisted that they will “embitter the loves of the new owners.”

The animus among Phoenix laborers comes as a result over a dispute about employee profit sharing. The Times of Israel reported that union leaders have said that their contracts call for the company to distribute profits that they are projected to earn with workers and thus far, the company has refused to discuss the matter.

According to Edouard Cukierman, the chairman of Cukierman & Co Investment House and a managing partner of the Catalyst Investment Funds, the action taken by Phoenix workers will not serve as a deterrent to Fosun from purchasing Phoenix or from continuing investment activity in Israel.

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