A man enters the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, Jan. 29, 2017. Photo: Reuters / Baz Ratner.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman and his Israel-born wife Neri Oxman purchased 4.9% of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on Wednesday, with an investment of $17 million. The deal comes as the flagship Israeli exchange announced a sale of 18.5% of the exchange to a consortium of foreign and domestic investors.
The shares sold were previously held by three of the major Israeli banks, Hapoalim, First International, and Mizrahi, and according to the exchange will help with liquidity and technology infrastructure.
Ackman’s purchase is an immediate profit for the Jewish hedge fund manager of Pershing Square Capital Management with a net worth of $4.9 billion. Due to an agreement made in 2017 when the exchange first expressed openness to selling some shares to private investors, they agreed to sell at a price of NIS 5.08 per share. However, the current price is four times that – 20.60 NIS – so Ackman and the other investors immediately quadrupled their investment.
Ackman has figured prominently on social media since the war’s outbreak on October 7, when Hamas terrorists raided southern Israel, massacring more than 1,200 Israeli and taking captive over 240 to the Gaza Strip. Since then, he has defended Israel and even led a campaign against his former university Harvard, and their disgraced former president Claudine Gay after she refused to condemn calls for genocide against Jews.
His wife is a renowned designer who grew up in Haifa and has a Ph.D. from MIT. The couple married in 2019 and have since been working together on Ackman’s firm’s philanthropic arm, Pershing Square Foundation.
The purchase of shares of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is Ackman’s first investment in the country since the Israel-Hamas war started on October 7.
The exchange said of the news “The transaction drew robust interest from investors across Israel, the United States, Europe, and Australia, reflecting a strong vote of confidence in both the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the Israeli economy at large.”
