Israel Active

I reported previously on Israel’s Beyond Verbal whose voice technology understands the emotions in human speech in multiple languages.  It has applications for business, marketing, games, media and more.  No wonder Beyond Verbal has just attracted $3 million of Chinese investment.

I reported on the innovative coatings developed by kibbutz-based Hanita previously . They insulate Whirlpool fridges and produce low cost alloy coatings for windows.  Hanita has just been bought out by California-based Avery Dennison for $75 million.

Beijing Xinwei Technology has bought Israel’s Spacecom Satellite Communications for $285 million. Spacecom (previously owned by Bezeq) operates the AMOS series of communications satellites.

Taiwan’s General Mobile Corporation (GMobi) is reportedly paying billions of Taiwanese dollars to buy out Israel’s MassiveImpact, one of the largest performance advertising firms for mobile in the world.  MassiveImpact reaches over 1 billion users in 190 countries.

I reported previously that Jerusalem-based Freightos set up the world’s first web market place for international freight.  Freightos has now bought Barcelona-based air-cargo rate management provider WebCargoNet creating the “world’s largest freight Big Data database of over 200 million data points.

The Innovation Center of Italian banking group Intesa Sanpaolo has signed a partnership agreement with Israel’s Bank Leumi to share commercial and technological expertise and projects.  An agreement with the Italian Israeli Chamber of Commerce aims to develop contacts for Italian and Israeli companies.

Bilateral trade in goods between Israel and Japan in the first seven months of 2016 rose to $1.4 billion from $1.1 billion in 2015. Japan is Israel's fourth-largest market in Asia.

A record of 3,623,800 Israelis traveled abroad between January-July 2016 - 14.6% more than the same period last year. A record 3,350,400 traveled through Ben-Gurion Airport - 15% higher than in 2015.

Ambassador Yoram Ettinger’s latest report makes inspiring reading.

Israel’s government approved the two-year 2017-2018 state budget setting it at 454 billion shekels ($118 billion) for 2017 and NIS 463 billion ($120 billion) for 2018.  It includes a series of growth incentives to increase competition and reduce the cost of living.