Israel's Minister Of Transportation And Intelligence. Yisrael Katz, And The Management Of Israel Ports Development & Assets Company Opened The Trading On TASE To Mark The Company’s Bond Issuing

​This morning (May 22), the management of Israel Ports Development & Assets Company opened the trading to mark the company’s bond offering on the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). Israel Ports Company is the second government company to issue bonds in 2018. The company has raised NIS 2.5 billion and joins the list of bond companies listed on TASE.

TASE’s bonds market is one of the most developed in the world, and TASE ranks second among the world’s stock exchanges in terms of the size of its trading volumes in corporate bonds. Currently, some 630 corporate bond series are listed on TASE with a total value of NIS 380 billion.

Yisrael Katz, Minister of Transportation and Intelligence: “Competition with the Ashdod and Haifa ports will yield results. Already, port workers have tried and continue to try to stifle this competition but, as I have stated, and I reiterate this today, this will not happen. The reform is proceeding at full speed and, as I undertook previously, we are doing this without taking a shekel from state funds. In addition to it being an expression of the public’s confidence, today’s successful bond offering by Israel Ports Company on TASE is also the most significant proof that the reform, which I earlier fought to launch for the benefit of Israel’s economy and its citizens, has succeeded beyond all expectations and represents an important milestone in establishing the two new ports”.

Yaakov Quint, Director of the Government Companies Authority praised the successful debt raising by Israel Ports Company and said: “I hope to see more infrastructure projects being executed with public funding. The public’s involvement with government companies is an excellent development and we welcome this”.

Shlomo Breiman, CEO of Israel Ports Company: “Israel Ports Company is today marking an important event: in a first, the Company closed an extremely successful bonds offering that raised NIS 2.5 billion. We have completed a most essential measure in our task to establish the new ports and to open the ports sector to competition and efficiency for the benefit of the economy. The entry of government companies into the Israeli capital market is an important milestone, provides diversity in investment sources for the public’s savings and will make a significant contribution to the Israeli economy”.

Hani Shitrit-Bach, EVP and Head of TASE’s Listing & Economics Department: “Israel Ports Company is the second government company to issue bonds in 2018. The company’s bond issuing raised NIS 2.5 billion and the bonds will join TASE’s Tel Bond indices in mid-November. I hope that, following this initial step, you will become used to being a company exposed to the investing public and that this advantage will be leveraged in the near future to issue equity on TASE. I also hope that other government companies will follow in your footsteps, which will give the Israeli public the opportunity to participate in the government companies’ success”.