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Doing Business in Israel

Contributed by Pearl Cohen Zedek Latzer Baratz

Business Environment

Pursuing and advancing its reputation as the “Start-Up Nation”, in 2019, the State of Israel continued to emphasize innovation at the forefront of its culture and business environment. The international Bloomberg Innovation Index of 2019 ranked Israel as the 5th most innovative country in the world. More than ever, Israel offers countless investment opportunities for global and domestic strategic partners, private equity and venture capital firms. Individuals can also invest in Israel as angel investors, as limited partners in venture capital funds focusing on Israeli investment, through crowd funding and public offerings around the globe.

This prosperity of Israel’s Start-Up Nation is reflected by the record sums invested in local innovation-driven companies and the increased sum-per-transaction across multiple industry segments, from cyber security and AI to biotechnology and medical devices.

In tandem, garnering such success demands of local companies and law-firms to carefully consider the manner in which they protect their key assets, primarily their talent and intellectual property. This article explores recent trends in the Israeli High-Tech industry and details its existing complexities and challenges.

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Legal market overview

Most multinational corporates and investors are aware of the commercial opportunities in the Israeli market and, similarly, many multinational law firms - especially from the US and UK - are aware of the vibrancy and growth of the Israeli legal market. Despite official restrictions on international firms operating in the country having been lifted for some time, however, the market remains dominated by strong domestic firms, of which there are many. Indeed, relative to population, Israel is the most heavily lawyered nation on Earth, and, as many of the country’s leading lawyers have been educated or trained or have worked in the US or Europe, firms tend to have the legal expertise and the international relationships needed to thrive in what is one of the region’s most sophisticated commercial markets.

Although 2018 did not see any single transaction quite in the range of Intel’s 2017 acquisition of Mobileye, Israel experienced no dearth of high-value M&A and international investment activity; partly thanks to the country’s world-class hi-tech sector and partly thanks to certain legislative initiatives that have necessitated a number of major transactions. Israel’s Anti-Concentration Law, which aims to reduce the size of large Israeli business groups and thus promote market competition, has been consequential since its adoption in 2013, and its most recent application to the country’s banking sector has culminated in forced disposals by Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi of their card payment businesses. At the time of writing, Bank Hapoalim is leaning toward an IPO for Isracard, while Bank Leumi opted to go the way of M&A, and sold Leumi Card to New York private equity firm Warburg Pincus in 2018. In addition to those transactions born of regulatory necessity, Israel’s hi-tech sector is a wellspring of international commercial activity and is commonly the source of the country’s most valuable M&A. One of the first major exit transactions of 2018 was StoreSmarts’ acquisition by US-based Retail IQ, but the year's largest exit transaction (as well as the year’s most valuable M&A) was KLA-Tencor’s $3.4bn acquisition of Orbotech.

Looking at the legal market itself, 2018/2019 has seen several notable lateral hires and team moves in addition to a significant law firm merger. Finalised in the first month of 2018, Shibolet & Co’s merger with Raved Magriso Benkel & Co brought the former's strengths in hi-tech, banking and M&A together with the latter’s expertise in infrastructure, litigation and administrative law, and created what is now one of the five largest law firms in Israel. Agmon & Co. Rosenberg Hacohen & Co. hired the hi-tech team from Lipa Meir & Co in order to develop not only its hi-tech practice, but also its life sciences practice. Lipa Meir & Co also has taken steps to transform its international capabilities and recently merged with specialty corporate and banking outfit Preis, Baharav & Co. One partner hire that ties back into the country’s regulatory landscape is Herzog Fox & Neeman’s recruitment of Seffy Zinger; until his arrival in 2018, Zinger had served at the Ministry of Justice and led the drafting process for the Law of Insolvency and Economic Rehabilitation, which aims to modernise and consolidate the set of insolvency laws for individuals and corporates in Israel; the law will come into effect in 2019. Also of note, hi-tech specialist Lori Almouli-Confino has taken a position as managing partner at Efrati, Galili, Confino & Co, where she seeks to develop the decades-old firm’s 'new economy' capabilities. Finally, with the announcement of its official alliance with Kennedys, insurance boutique Zelichov, Ben-Dan & Co has become one of the first Israeli firms to form a formal affiliation with an international law firm.

Firms in the spotlight

Ehrlich & Fenster

www.ipatent.co.il

The Ehrlich Group is a leading Israel based Intellectual Property firm offering premiere expertise in the full range of IP services, including all matters concerning the protection and prosecution of intellectual Property (Patents, Trademarks, Designs, Breeder's Right's etc.) and IP legal services, including, litigation and litigation support services, to corporations, institutions, governmental institutions, universities and individual clients around the world.

Krispin, Rubinstein, Blecher & Co.

www.krblawfirm.com

Krispin, Rubinstein, Blecher & Co. is a newly established law firm, formed by former senior partners of Goldfarb Seligman & Co., each of them a leading lawyer in their practice area – Adv Amit Krispin in energy and infrastructure projects; Adv Noga Rubinstein in the regulation, telecoms and media and competition; and Adv Roy Blecher in the white-collar litigation and dispute resolution.

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Scale-up nation - chasing Israel's high growth clients

Israel’s start-ups are building themselves up for global prominence, leading to a frenzy of high-value
transactional activity

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Legal Developments in Israel

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  • INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR HNWIs IN ISRAEL’S HI-TECH ECOSYSTEM

    Accredited investor funding platforms for innovative tech scale-ups offer more choice and without having to commit a large chunk of capital upfront, the risk is diluted.
    - Yigal Arnon & Co

  • Perhaps the QuadragaCX Story Will Have a Happy Ending

    While there are the aficionados who will say that cryptocurrencies will free us of the chains of the global financial institutions, on the occasions when the world of cryptocurrencies intersects with the world in which most of us live, the news is generally bleak. While you may not know one side of a Bitcoin from the other, you probably know that its value has crashed over the last 13 months, you may even have heard about some of some of the larger cryptohacks (that is computer heists through which digital currencies belonging to investors are stolen from crypto trading exchanges). And over the last week or so, you may have read on mainstream news sites about the death of Gerald Cotton the CEO of Canada’s largest cryptoexchange QuadragaCX. The death of the CEO of a company that few had previously heard of, was news of course, because in his passing he had taken the passwords to the accounts of his customers with him. The result of this being that about $140 million of their money was stuck somewhere between this world and the celestial ether in which Mr. Cotton now resides. Of course, it wasn’t quite told like that. We were fed terms such as “private keys,” lack of “multi-signature protection,” “cold storage wallets” and more readily understandable – “cryptofraud”. Again!
    - Yigal Arnon & Co

  • Israel Chapter in The Virtual Currency Regulation Review

    Earlier this year, the Israel Tax Authority (ITA) issued two circulars, one on the taxation of digital tokens and the second addressing the taxation of utility tokens in initial coin offerings (ICOs). Additionally, in March, the Israel Securities Authority (ISA) released a detailed interim report by the Committee for the Regulation of Public Offerings of Decentralized Cryptocurrency Coins (Report) (with a follow-up report due to come out around October 2018). Moreover, it is expected that before the end of 2018, legislation will come into force that for the first time will see Israeli primary legislation define virtual currencies as financial assets and mandate licensing for related services, as is later discussed in detail.
    - Yigal Arnon & Co

  • Spring is coming for real estate registration in Israel

    Israel may be the “Start-up Nation” and a world-renowned center of technological innovation, yet for many years the procedures and conduct of the Israeli Land Registry have been trapped in the past.
    - Yigal Arnon & Co

  • PLATFORMS FOR HIGH NET WORTH INVESTORS IN ISRAELI HIGH-TECH

    Israeli hi-tech and its sources of funding have grown and diversified tremendously since the bubble burst in 2001 and over the last decade since the height of the financial crisis in 2007-2008.
    - Yigal Arnon & Co

  • NONDISCRIMINATION IN 5G STANDARDS

    Nondiscrimination has been the neglected stepchild of the FRAND commitment. Patent owners participating in standards organizations typically commit to license their technology on “fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (“FRAND”) terms.”
    - Yigal Arnon & Co

  • Crash Course on Non-Disclosure Agreements

    Non-disclosure agreements are a crucial, but often overlooked, tool in allowing startup companies to grow, build strategic partnerships and explore new business relationships necessary to develop their product or bring it to market. These agreements are often short (sometimes only a page or two) and lead many founders to forego legal advice to get past this "formality" and begin working with the other party to the NDA. Yet, NDAs are important agreements with potentially far-reaching implications for the protection of a company's confidential information and intellectual property, and mishandling of NDAs can come back to haunt a startup years later.
    - Yigal Arnon & Co

  • Advocates Eli Greenbaum and Ezra Gross of Yigal Arnon & Co. in The Lawyer Special Report editorial

    An interview-style piece in The Lawyer, Law in Israel: moving beyond tech, quoting Eli Greenbaum and Ezra Gross:
    - Yigal Arnon & Co

  • Publication of Adv. Adrian Daniel's Commentary in Private Banker International on GDPR & Blockchain

    Publication of Adv. Adrian Daniel's Commentary in Private Banker International on GDPR & Blockchain.
    - Yigal Arnon & Co

  • Article in MEA Markets on GDPR & Israeli Law

    GDPR & ISRAELI PRIVACY LAW - KEY DIFFERENCES Yoheved Novogroder-Shoshan & Miriam Friedmann of Yigal Arnon & Co. outline the key differences between GDPR & Israeli Privacy Law.  mea_markets_-_gdpr__israeli_law_-_key_differences_14.05.2018
    - Yigal Arnon & Co

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