It’s official. Warren Buffet has set aside an additional US$2.0 billion and thus bought outright Iscar Metalworking in northern Israel. It’s rumoured that his first deal, worth $4.0 billion, took ten days to conclude. This one was apparently sealed up in ten minutes.

As I recently observed, foreign direct investment is still entering Israel at a reasonable rate. The new finance minister, Yair Lapid, may not like the concept of budget controls, but he will enforce them. The estimate for the reserves of gas off Israel’s coast has just been raised by 10%.

Israel has fostered another new industry in the past five years, capitalising on the app bonanza. For example, Glide Talk Ltd. was a finalist in the “TechCrunch” Disrupt New York event. The app records and sends brief video clips. Funtactix (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv) and its Hunger Games Adventures has seen over five million downloads in the past years. And of course, WAZE with its traffic reports is rumoured to be discussions with several megas, including Apple.

And the connection between Buffet and apps? I have no doubt that Buffet is not going to throw any of his extra cash at the mobile industry or its software derivatives. However, he recognises the vitality of the Israeli economy. Iscar started in the backyard of its founder and grew to become an industry leader in a few decades. Israel’s app and internet successes – see above, Conduit, Wix and others – have displayed similar versatility.

To quote Buffet:

Israel is a great place to invest in because of the people in it. There is no other place in the world where you can find people with the kind of qualities and motivation and the ability to focus like the people at Iscar.