Following a short search for a replacement for Yossi Beinart, who resigned for medical reasons, Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) director and Bank Leumi (TASE: LUMI) executive Itai Ben-Zeev has been appointed CEO of the TASE. The appointment committee explained its choice by citing Ben-Zeev's vast experience with complex and labor-intensive systems, his profound understanding of advanced capital market technologies, and his great familiarity with Israeli and global finance.
Ben-Zeev, who is entering his new post at the height of a crisis, faces many challenges. The number of companies listed on the TASE is constantly declining, and there are no new offerings. There is a rift between TASE management and its workers, due to measures aimed at restructuring TASE ownership and the effort to sign a new work agreement. Relations among TASE senior managers are poor, with many managers being replaced within a short time. The TASE is expected to report much poorer results for this year, with a net loss and a serious decline in its liquidity.
In view of the current situation, Ben-Zeev is expected to assume a great deal of authority, after the TASE board of directors deprived dominant chairman Amnon Neubach, who waged power struggles against Beinart and acting CEO Gal Landau-Yaari, of much of his authority.
The TASE today said that Ben-Zeev would take up his position on January 1, 2017, and that "At the same time, Neubach announced that following an orderly run-in period for the incoming CEO, and no later than the end of the first quarter of 2017, he intended to focus exclusively on running the board of directors and its committees and overseeing the TASE as a non-executive chairman. Neubach stressed that there were clear understandings between him and the incoming CEO about the division of authority and their joint work."
Ben-Zeev, 41, is regarded as very professional and appropriate appointee. He recently rejected feelers about an appointment as CEO of Psagot Investment House Ltd.. Ben-Zeev has been a Bank Leumi executive since 2013. Among other things, he was responsible at the bank for managing a NIS 120 billion nostro account, the bank's balance sheet, the risk management department, the institutional customers and foreign banks department , the bank's dealing rooms, its securities and derivatives operations department, and complex technological projects.
Ben-Zeev has been a TASE director on Bank Leumi's behalf for more than two years. He began working at Bank Leumi as a dealing room trader in 2000, from where he advanced to desk manager and customer dealing rooms manager positions. In 2007-2010, he was manager of the foreign currency and derivatives dealing room, and in 2010-2013 was deputy head of the capital markets division. Before working at Bank Leumi, Ben-Zeev was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch in London, New York, and Israel. As far as is known, there is no obvious immediate replacement for him at the bank.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 3, 2016
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