Discount Investment board ousts Ben-Moshe

Moti Ben-Moshe and Eduardo Elsztain
Moti Ben-Moshe and Eduardo Elsztain

Ben-Moshe told the Discount Investment board that he was ready and willing to inject NIS 575 million into the company.

Discount Investment Corporation Ltd. (TASE:DISI) board of directors met last night and decided to oust Moti Ben-Moshe from his position as co-chairman of the board, similar to the recent decision of the IDB Development board. In parallel, the Discount Investment board of directors blocked a discussion proposed by Ben-Moshe on injecting cash into the company.

In response, Ben-Moshe said that the Discount Investment board refused to discuss his proposal despite the fact that the proposal was not contingent upon anything. Ben-Moshe, and presumably also Discount Investments' creditors, will study the effects of the decision before deciding on next steps.

Earlier yesterday evening Ben-Moshe told the Discount Investments board that he is ready and willing to inject NIS 575 million into the company in order to improve its financial situation.

Ben-Moshe planned to offer the board of directors to inject the sum in exchange for a share allocation, and the plan would include a series of operational measures as well, including increasing his involvement in the core companies (Cellcom, Shufersal, and Property & Building Corp. (PBC)) in order to improve them.

In addition, Ben-Moshe wanted to convince the board to act to realize its ownership of the HSBC building in New York, which recently reported that PBC had received an offer to sell it for $900 million (NIS 3.5 billion).

Ben-Moshe's offer was in response to the offer made yesterday by Eduardo Elsztain to inject $75 million (NIS 290 million) into IDB Development, which would then be transferred to Discount Investments, in order to strengthen it.

Ben-Moshe is not interested in harming IDB Development's shareholders or creditors, and he is therefore expected to agree to also inject the money via IDB Development, if the Discount Investment board determines that this is a more preferable course of action.

Ben-Moshe's counter-offer indicates that he is prepared to renew his battle over the company's assets, after he refused to participate in the last IDB rights issue, which caused his holding to be diluted to 16.2%, while Elsztain's holding increased to 61.5%.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 20, 2015

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2015

Moti Ben-Moshe and Eduardo Elsztain
Moti Ben-Moshe and Eduardo Elsztain
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