Hedge fund and asset management company Priority Investments , owned by Oded Koritshoner and Ami Sessler, has pledges for $15 million of the $50 million it plans to raise for a new venture capital fund named H2Tech, which will focus on water technologies. Koritshoner and Sessler expect to raise the rest of the finance within the next few months.
As reported in “Globes,” private investor Maccabi Carasso, of the vehicle importer, Carasso Group, has been in contact with the fund and plans to invest a further $5 million in water technologies.
”We conducted a thorough search of companies in the water field, from early stage concept to companies at the selling stage, and we came up with 10-12 companies with whom it would be definitely worthwhile starting negotiations,” said Koritshoner today.
The fund will be managed by Ehud Ram, who currently manages the small venture capital firm Spark Enterprise Ltd. ($25 million under management). Also due to appointed as managers are former MedNautilus president and CEO Amos Lasker, which managed the Israel-Italy MED 1 underwater cable, eventually bought by Telecom Italia, and Giora Shaham, a water engineer and former head of the River Administration, who oversaw the partial flooding of the Hula lake, drained in the 1950s.
Priority has been active in the capital market for three years, and has $100 million in assets under management.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on June 7, 2006
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