Weekly Review October 25-29, 2009

During the fourth week of October the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) dropped in most of leading indices, in keeping with the negative trend in international financial markets.

 

The TA-25 index that declined 2% this week, still have a cumulative year-to-date increase of 56%. The TA-75 index dropped 1%, bringing its cumulative year-to-date return to 132%. This stellar performance can be attributed to the sharp increase in share prices earlier in the year of shares involved in the discovery of gas in two sites off Israel’s Mediterranean shore.

 

Leading descending indices this week were the hi-tech companies and major finance companies shares sliding 2%-2.5%, while the large real estate shares did not change this week.

 

An agreement to acquire controlling interest in Israeli telecom company, Bezeq, a TA-25 company, was signed this week. According to the agreement, holdings of the private equity “Apex-Saban-Arkin” group, equaling a 30.6% interest, will be sold for US $1.8 billion to "Smile 012 Communications", a subsidiary of "Internet Gold"- both companies dually traded on TASE and NASDAQ.

 

The Israeli treasury raised an additional US $270 million this week in a local government bond issue. So far this year, the government has raised approximately US $15 billion, a sum slightly higher than the amount raised during the entire 2008 year.

 

Following a 0.3% decrease in the rate of inflation in September, the Bank of Israel left the interest rate for November unchanged at 0.75%.