Fattal Hotel Management Ltd. chairman David Fattal has found a back door to float his company on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). Sources inform ''Globes'' that he is in talks on a reverse merger of the company's Western European operations with stock market shell Tamir Fishman Real Estate Ltd. (TASE: TFRE).
Tamir Fishman said, "No comment." Fattal was unavailable for comment.
If a deal is closed, Fattal will transfer the hotel operations to Tamir Fishman Real Estate in exchange for the controlling interest in the company. Fattal's owns 34 hotels under the Leonardo brand in Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland. Most of this business is carried out through a tourism investment fund that Fattal founded several years ago. The fund raised €100 million and bought 20 hotels for €330 million.
Other investors in the fund are Delek Real Estate Ltd. (TASE: DLKR, Amitim (the eight nationalized old pension funds), Menorah Mivtachim Holdings Ltd. (TASE: MORA), and Dorea Investment and Developments Ltd. (TASE:DORA).
Tamir Fishman Investment House set up Tamir Fishman Real Estate as a REIT, but it has no operations. It owns 621,000 square meters of land with 720,000 of building rights in Romania and Hungary. It posted a net loss of €461,000 on zero revenue in the first quarter of 2011, after losing €5 million in 2010 and €7 million in 2009.
Two months ago, Tamir Fishman Real Estate called off talks for a merger with Elad Israel, the domestic residential arm of Yitzhak Tshuva-controlled Delek Real Estate Ltd. (TASE: DLKR.
Tamir Fishman Real Estate's share price was unchanged at NIS 1.81 today, giving a market cap of NIS 40 million.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 18, 2011
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2011