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 (General (res) Effie Eitam MK. commenting on the awards of citations to a new generation of soldiers after the Second Lebanon War. General Eitam is the highest ranking religious soldier in the IDF Reserve, and a citation for bravery recipient following the Yom Kippur War.) - No less a conservative economist than our very own Prof Stanley Fisher, Governor of the Bank of Israel, and he should know, has had to admit that all the indicators point to the continued, rapid growth of the Economy. Looking at the performance of many Israeli companies in Q2, we would have to agree. Now that’s GN
- Israel’s National Men’s Basket ball team downed the mighty Serbs, 87-83 in a cliffhanger played in Granada Spain. Meir Tapiro netted four free throws in the final eight seconds and Yaniv Green ended with a personal tally of 26 points. The Blue and Whites now move into the second round of EuroBasket 07.
- Just in case you thought that everything would be slowing down in preparation for the Rosh Hashana holiday, here is a brief summary of contracts signed and sealed in the past week by Israeli companies:
- Alvarion will be deploying its wireless broadband solutions in the Moscow area to provide high quality access to schools. Value in the region of millions of dollars.
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 Indian Company Bharti-AirTel will be receiving broadband data services from ECI Telecom at a cost of $50m. ECI will be providing the same services to the Urals region of the FSU (Former Soviet Union). - A major (unspecified) International Airport in Europe will have its perimeter security installed and maintained by Vuance for the next eight years. Approximate value $20m.
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 AT&T – and everybody knows who they are- have signed on the dotted line to receive ECTel’s RAP (Revenue Assurance Program - and we can only guess what that is- at a cost in the millions of dollars. - Reorganizing and upgrading systems for banks and finance house is the specialty of Blue Phoenix Solutions, and they are rendering the service for an unnamed European Bank for $2.5m.
- BVR Systems which builds simulators will be supplying an international customer with a product designed to train air defense personnel in the operation of short range weapons at a cost of $10.1m.
- And to end off. Cyclone a subsidiary of Elbit sold $30m worth of aircraft spare parts and insulated doors for aircraft engines to Spirit AeroSystems Inc, a multinational supplier of airplane assemblies.
- While the men were taking care of Serbia in Spain, The women’s national basetball side was chalking up a win against Bulgaria on home turf. In a game where the lead changed a number of times the ladies, playing their first local fixture in two years, eventually downed their opponents 76-64 to move on to the next qualifying round of EuroBasket 07, Women’s.
- And to round it all off the National Handicapped Hoopsters came 4th in the European Championships in Germany having beaten the home side, Poland, Holland, Turkey and Italy. This meant that they missed out on a medal, but have qualified for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. GN for these wonderful people and GN for Israel.
- The Israeli merchant marine is going from strength to strength with the owners of Zim integrated Shipping Services having placed orders for eight container ships at a total cost of $1.35bn. This is part of the strategy of the shipping line to substantially increase its capacity and its competitive edge.
- A revolution in education? Not quite but almost. We’re talking about Tafnit that translates as ‘turnaround’, a program designed to assist those kids who confront failure on a daily basis during their last three years in the school system. Without going into details the program turns these students around and literally teaches them how to succeed, and succeed they do, with a 90% pass rate in Matric. The program actually changes lives for the better and that’s GN.
 - Teva the world’s largest generic drug manufacturer has made a strategic decision to combine with startup companies to produce one proprietary drug each year. With many exciting and revolutionary medications in the pipeline, first up will be a treatment for various blood diseases using stem cells. Considering that the company has produced only two prescription drugs, the highly successful Copaxone and Azilect for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, in twenty years, this new strategy will completely change the company’s profile.
- Always a bridesmaid, never a bride – not yet anyway. That seems to be the story of Israel’s tennis star, Shahar Pe’er. Ranked no 19 in the world, Shahar went down 6-4, 6-1, to the world’s no 6, Anna Chakvetadze in the US open quarterfinals, bringing back bad memories of the quarters in the Australian open where the same thing happened. So what’s the GN? The GN is that she is the first Israeli lady to reach the final 8 in two Grand Slam Competitions and she went home with $132,000, which is not a bad consolation prize.
- The government has posted a substantial budget surplus in August for the seventh month out of eight this year. So far the total amount involved is NIS 7.6bn, a third more than the same time last year. Yet another indication of a burgeoning economy.
- We at GN had always learnt that the expression, “a land flowing with milk and honey”, and what a beautiful description it is, referred to goat’s milk and the honey that flows from dates. But surprise, surprise a Hebrew University archeologist has found a large constructed beehive colony dating back 3,000 years to the time of King Solomon. So the honey is honey and now all we have to do is to find evidence of cows and we have to change our minds altogether.
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 Now here is a real turn up for the books, and really GN. The IUCN–World Conservation Union has just named Israel the country in the Mediterranean Basin with the highest percentage of land for the preservation of nature. With 16% of its territory set aside for nature reserves, national parks and forests, it is well ahead of France and Spain and leaves Lebanon with only 0.5% of dedicated land, well, in the dust.  - Elbit Medical Imaging is fast becoming one of Israel’s largest Real Estate developers- who would have thought, with a name like that?! –and they’re betting on India, like a whole lot of other Israeli entrepreneurs that we know of. Their latest project involves the investment of $1.2bn in building fifty shopping and entertainment centers in Bangalore and Pune. The company is not short of ready cash, having just raised NIS 630m from a bonds issue and a further NIS1bn in profit from the sale of a Hippodrome project in Budapest.
- 500 foreign teenagers have joined different programs that will allow them to do their last years of schooling in Israel. The Naaleh program for example that has been running since 1992 has brought 11000 students from Europe, South America and South Africa. Over 96% of the students graduate and receive an Israeli matriculation-recognized by universities and colleges worldwide.
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 The school named for the late Ilan Ramon is a Primary school that teaches a science-enriched curriculum. In fact the pupils in the first grade already learn Astrophysics. Astrophysics? In the first grade? We at GN were at university before we first heard the word. Now that’s progress! |
