News Briefs

August 24, 2014 | Omen metal casting company issued an IPO of NIS 200 million ($56,562,800) for the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, but had to settle for NIS 120 million ($33,937,680). The new TASE draft prospectus is expected for the next month. Omen specializes in high-compression manufacturing of aluminum and brass casting. Its business has recently expanded in Europe and Russia, while the company hopes to double their business over the next year. Omen high pressure die casting was founded in 1946 on Kibbutz Hatzor, Israel.

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August 24, 2014 | The employee referral platform Zao was acquired by UK e-recruitment company Amris, which is owned by the Internet Corporation Limited. While the terms of the deal, including the monetary details, remain undisclosed, Amris is most likely acquiring the entire Zao product and technology, and only a portion of the startup’s existing staff will remain, including founder and former CEO Ziv Eliraz. Zao is a social recruitment platform that rewards a company’s and its employees wider network of connections for job referrals founded in 2011 and based in Los Angeles, California.

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August 24, 2014 | Cutting tools developer and manufacturer Lamina Technologies received a $42 million investment from Catalyst CEL, an Israeli-Chinese investment fund. The investment allots $10 million to expanding the company’s global business and $32 million for the company’s current shareholders. As part of the deal, Catalyst CEL will become Lamina’s controlling shareholder together with Lamina’s current management team. Lamina was founded in 2011 by brothers Yuval and Amir Peleg, specializing in the manufacture and development of cutting tools for circuit processing.

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August 21, 2014 | FeeX, a service that finds and reduces hidden investment fees, announced that it raised $6.5 million in Series B funding. The funding round was led by Horzions Ventures and Blumberg Capital, bringing the total funds raised by the Israeli startup to $9.6 million to date. In March 2014, FeeX launched in the United States to help Americans assess and reduce the amount of money they spend on financial fees each year – about $600 billion. FeeX has over 600,000 users and has surpassed $1 billion in assets under its protection, identifying more than $277 million in potential savings for its customers. FeeX was founded in 2012 by Yoav Zurel, David Weisz, Eyal Halahmi and Uri Levine, the creator of Waze.

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August 21, 2014 | According to a “Globes” report, former PlayTech CEO and board member Avigur Zmora is launching his own startup called Funzing. Funzing is a website that recommends unique events and experiences based on the user’s age and location. Zmora, who has already investment tens of thousands of dollars in the company, founded the website with Eran Along, who will act as CEO, Noa Moscati and Yaron Sagiv. Funzig believes that it has an advantage over the competition due to its ability to filter activities based on age and location, benefiting users and activity organizers. The website has been active for three months and the company hopes to launch outside of Israel soon.

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August 21, 2014 | Protalix Biotherapeutics is set to face a more competitive market for its treatment for Gaucher’s disease. The US Food & Drug Administration approved for marketing a new drug for the treatment of the genetic disease – Cerdelga made by Sanofi. Protalix’s flagship drug to treat Gaucher’s disease was also approved by the FDA for marketing and the company has a cooperation agreement with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which markets the drug everywhere except for Israel and Brazil. Gaucher’s disease is a genetic disease in which fatty substances accumulate in the cells and organs. Protalix was founded in 1993 by Yoseph Shaaltiel and is headquartered in Carmiel, Israel.

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August 20, 2014 | According to the 2014 Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the Technion Israel Institute of Technology was rated as one of the world’s 100 best universities. Within the ranking, Technion placed 18th for its computer science program, the highest ranking given to an Israeli institution in any field. In addition, the school ranked 43rd in engineering, rising three spots from last year’s ranking. Finally, the school was rated 78th overall, sealing its place among the top 80 universities in the world.

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August 20, 2014 | BioView, a company specializing in automating laboratory tests, announced that it will expand its cooperation with medical equipment and diagnostics company Abbot Laboratories. BioView made the announcement today to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange that it signed an agreement with Abbot for development purposes. According to the current agreement, Abbot will develop signs using Fish technology to identify and excess or lack of a certain genes in a cell with the goal of determining whether a certain gene is responsible for the development of diseases. Abbot is currently developing the sign while BioView is developing the identification software. BioView was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Rehovot, Israel

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August 20, 2014 | According to the latest Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report, the Israeli economy is still one of the world’s most attractive for foreign direct investment (FDI). The report outlines that Israel is fourth place in the world in terms of being a target for foreign investment in proportion to its GDP. Foreign direct investment in Israel totaled four percent of the country’s GDP in 2013, behind Luxembourg, Ireland and Chile. The OECD aggregate of FDI was 1.4 percent, with the 20 most important countries reporting an aggregate ratio of 1.6 percent. Moreover, Israel’s ratio of incoming FDI was higher than the aggregate ratio for emerging markets, above those of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), which have attracted the most FDI in the past decade.

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August 20, 2014 |Businessman and owner of AGT International and Logic Industries Mati Kochavi has set up Moonscape Ventures to invest up to $120 million in Israeli startups. Like other venture capital firms, Moonscape will make early stage investments in a number of sectors related to the Internet of Things (wearable technology), including smart cities, big data and news and media technologies. The first round of investments will total between $500,000-$5 million. Moonscape will be managed by Tammy Mahn, a leading investment figure with experience at Pitango Venture Capital and Evergreen Venture Partners. Moonscape has already invested $3.1 million in one startup – Social Studios – whose technology uses social media data to automatically create and curate personal video content.

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August 19, 2014 | Software solutions developer Ginger announced that it will launch Ginger Student, a version of its writing coaching app aimed at students. The writing coach app was launched by the company two months ago to help people improve their writing skills by correcting spelling, suggesting synonyms and correcting sentence syntax. The new student version of the app will be available as a desktop app and browser extension, as well as offer a more affordable pricing tier for students. An Israeli software company headed by CEO Maoz Shacht, Ginger has made it their mission to remove language barriers between people by enabling communication in native-level English.

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August 19, 2014 | The cryptocurrency research and development company BlockCorp announced the release of a new platform for Bitcoin analytics called BlockTrail. The new platform secured $669,310 (€500,000) from BlockCorp and hopes to surface information about cryptocurrency transactions by creating tools for the analysis of network and economic data. The startup is focusing on institutional and governmental customers, but as well as developers with its soon-to-launch API. The BlockTrail team includes developers from Vircu, a bitcoin data company that was acquired by BlockCorp. BlockCorp is an Amsterdam-based research group founded by Boaz Bechar and Lev Leviev.

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August 19, 2014 | According to a “Globes” report, Israeli stem cell technologies developer Gamida Cell has confirmed reports of signing an investment and options agreement with Novartis Pharma AG. In the terms of the agreement, Novartis will invest $35 million in Gamida Cell and in return will receive 15 percent equity and the option to fully acquire the company. The agreement remains dependent, however, on the achievement of certain milestones, such as the development of NiCord for the treatment of blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma.

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August 19, 2014 | Israeli company Crossrider is set to go public on London’s Stock Exchange, AIM. The IPO is set to be released sometime in September in which the company will attempt to raise $50-60 million that will be used for its own growth investment. Crossrider is expected to be valued at between $200-250 million for the upcoming IPO. Last December, the digital marketing and advertising services provider sold to Markets.com, a leading financial trading site, for $37 million. Crossrider will be the third company to be floated on the London Stock Exchange owned by Israeli Tedi Sagi along with Playtech and SafeCharge.

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August 19, 2014 | The Israeli technology security firm RISCO will protect ATM machines in China, according to a “Times of Israel” report. In a deal signed between the company and Chinese banks, tens of thousands of Chinese ATMs will be equipped with sensors to alert security personnel if someone is trying to steal money. RISCO’s security sensors were recently used in the World Cup in Brazil, providing protection against unauthorized entries and counterfeit tickets. RISCO Group is a security company founded three decades ago.

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