Israelis secret love for the London Stock Market
Slowly but surely, more and more Israeli companies are looking to London in order to raise money on the international financial circuit. TechFinancials is the latest recruit. With a technology that enables binary options trading, the company is looking to raise around £15 million on the AIM market with a valuation of £80 million.
There have been at least 9 other Israeli companies who have found their way to London over the past year. The most well-known is that of Tedi Sagi, the prime owner of Camden Market. He is seeking “to raise £100m in an IPO on the junior Aim market by the end of the year, giving the company a valuation of £750m.”
SafeCharge, which launched an IPO in August and raised £75m, AnyOption for £40m, and Bagir for £20m have all been part of this charge. Significantly, barely a month ago, the British ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, led a delegation to London of Israeli companies, which are considering using the aim market. Up to that point throughout 2014, Israeli corporations had “raised a total of £535m , with a combined market capitalization of a total figure of £1.3b.”
In a year when the UK and Israel have not always agreed on the diplomatic front, it may seem ironic that the UK-Israel Tech Hub has seem some extraordinary success. Overall, bilateral trade has grown around 26% since 2013. Future trade delegations will promote cooperation the fields of cyber, water tech and agritech, amongst others.
Israelis find London a very easy place to create new commercial value. English is not a problem for most travellers. Geographically, the distance is only a five hour flight or two hours across time zones. And many of the visitors are familiar with Chelsea, Liverpool and Man United. It would seem that this growth in bilateral trade and financial commerce between Israel and Britain is set to continue into 2015.
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