Azerbaijan invests in Israeli oil
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.
Lawyers for Israel
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.
More jobs available
Israel’s employment data revealed that 44,300 new jobs opportunities opened in March.
Israeli economy grows faster than expected
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%.
Demand for hi-tech engineers up 15%
“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."
Sweden loves Israeli hi-tech
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.
EMC buys the store
US technology giant EMC has confirmed the purchase of its sixth Israeli company. It paid $430million for Israeli flash memory storage systems company XtremIO.
British Airways Celebrates 80 Years of Flying to Israel
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.
No slowdown here
The Bank of Israel has just issued its survey of Israeli companies for the first 3 months of 2012. It shows that business sector activity expanded in the first quarter of 2012, reversing the slowdown trend reflected in the survey in the second half of last year. Industrial output increased and confidence is high.
On the Russian track
Israel’s Orbit Technologies Ltd has won a NIS 5.6 million order from the Russian Federal Space Agency to supply low-earth orbit remote sensing satellite tracking and communications systems for ground stations to cover the Russian Federation.