Germany-Israel 50th jubilee – Beyond the High-Tech Success
Vardina Hilloo
Germany and Israel mark this year the 50th anniversary of the establishment an diplomatic relations.
At the same time our media IsraFocus are celebrating 10 years of its existence. .
2014 was for the Israelis high-tech exits industry, a record year of $15 billion,
and the average purchase amount was 212 million 52, 70 IPOs mergers
and acquisitions. “the best-ever year for the country's high-tech and biomed sector
in terms of exits”, according to figures published by PwC Israel.
The past year broke the record reached in 2006, when the total amount
of purchases was of $ 10 billion, a leap compared to 1.2 billion in 2013.
In fact it was the most successful year in the high tech since 2008, due to the
models of raising funds, the start-ups rate and exits.
There is no doubt that the power of “Start-Up Nation” which has made the
country world’s second most important startup location after Silicon Valley,
demonstrated his full strength in previous year.
The maturity of Israeli companies and investors partners were leading to the success
of exits, given a safety investment, as well openness to IPO US and UK and Israeli
entrepreneurship ambitious, all these elements led the last year's success.
Experts believe that the wave of IPOs will continue in the current year, along with
the desire of corporate mergers and acquisitions technology innovative, and this trend
seems to be continuing, namely growth of its high-tech industry.
As to the scope of business in this regards between Israel and Germany, upward trend
of recent years can be seen, though there is still a necessity of improvement.
The biggest German brand and companies represented in Israel through Israeli businessmen
or joint ventures like Siemens, DaimlerChrysler, Volkswagen, Henkel, Deutsche Telekom and others.
Cooperation between German and Israeli companies in high- tech sectors such as information
technology, communication and biotechnology has increased.
Europe’s Largest Research Organization, Fraunhofer Society, sets sights on Israel by
the end of 2014.
The German media giant ProSiebenSat.1 hold lately in Tel Aviv start-up competition.
The group were offering prizes of €7m in TV ads for Israeli start-ups.
At 'Axis Tel Aviv 2014', conference, German companies were looking for an Israeli
investment opportunity, knowing that Israel is extremely attractive due to the high
number of technology companies that grow up in the country (more than 4,800 start- up firms).
Mobileye an Israeli technology company that develops vision-based providing warnings
for collision prevention and mitigation, a wide range of driver safety solutions combining
artificial vision image processing, are acting also in Duesseldorf, Germany beside to Israel,
New York; Shanghai, Tokyo etc.
Meanwhile the Newsweek magazine, devoted an extensive article in July last year,
about young Israeli entrepreneurs who are flocking to Berlin, like the Berlin-based
creations are InFarm, which allows people to grow micro-vegetables indoors; Capsuling Me,
which helps organizations target their marketing based on their users’ online profiles;
and Screemo, which allows concert audiences to
choose a band’s next song by voting with their mobile devices and seeing the result
appear in real time on large screens.
“Newsweek” reported also that the German-Israeli chamber of commerce has spotted the
trend, and recently launching an initiative called BETATEC (Berlin Tel Aviv Technology
and Entrepreneurship Committee). The program will help Israelis start companies in
Berlin but also send German entrepreneurs to Israeli incubators, where they’ll
receive mentoring.
The Israeli economy is still one of the world's most attractive targets for
foreign direct investment (FDI), as the annual OECD report on the subject claims.
According to the report's figures, Israel is in fourth place in the world as a target
for foreign investment in proportion to GDP, with FDI totaling 4% of GDP in 2013,
trailing Luxembourg, Ireland, and Chile. Foreign investors spend billions of money in Israel.
In light the event of jubilee fifty years relations between the two countries,
mutual visits of experts and politicians, it is the right time to lead an significance
awareness of investment and ongoing collaborations in many topic as energy, medicine,
biomed, science, biotechnology, Cyber etc. and creating an Initiate of bilateral
interest for longer-term growth potential economic cooperation.
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