Israel Active

Frequent Israeli visitors to the US will soon have an easier time entering the country. Israel will be admitted into the Global Entry program so that business travellers, diplomats, and those with family in both countries can utilize a streamlined, computerized customs procedure.

“Israeli technology stocks appear well positioned for 2012,” Barclays Capital analysts Joseph Wolf and David Kaplan wrote in its Global Technology Outlook. It recommends Mellanox Technologies Ltd., Nice Systems Ltd., EZchip Technologies Ltd. and Ceva Inc.

The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) has bought a 5-percent stake in Med Ashdod, Israel’s only economically viable oil field, located 16 km off the Mediterranean coast. SOCAR wants experience of international oil production and this will be its first foreign drilling operation.

Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz has signed a directive removing barriers that prevent foreign lawyers from working in Israel, and permitting collaboration between Israeli and foreign law firms.

Israel’s employment data revealed that 44,300 new jobs opportunities opened in March.

Israel’s GDP grew by 3% on an annualized basis in the first quarter of 2012, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported today. The growth rate was above the 2.5% growth predicted in Bloomberg’s poll of analysts. Exports for the first quarter of 2012 rose 14%.

“The recession everyone feared would come happily has not arrived to Israel's high-tech industry," said Ethnosia Human Resources Ltd’s CEO Eyal Solomon. "Instead of falling demand, we're seeing the opposite. Foreign investors want to increase their investments in Israeli companies."

Erel Margalit is helping Sweden develop its start-up industry. A crowd of some 400 Swedish entrepreneurs, managers and venture capitalists gathered to hear Israel’s leading venture capitalist speak at the 10th anniversary of entrepreneurial incubator STING, one of the biggest in Sweden.

US technology giant EMC has confirmed the purchase of its sixth Israeli company. It paid $430million for Israeli flash memory storage systems company XtremIO.

In pre-State 1932, British Airways (known then as Imperial Airlines) operated seaplanes to the Kinneret (Galilee). Now it flies Boeings twice a day to Tel Aviv.